As It Must Be
by randomscribblings
Summary: When Rose Tyler ends up in the parallel universe, it seems that all is lost. Luckily, fate and the TARDIS have other plans for her, including a journey through her Doctor's past and future. Rose x Doctor
1. Prologue

**A/N: **This is my first ever foray into the world of Doctor Who fanfiction, so be kind to me. I like happy endings and I love Rose Tyler, just like the Doctor does. If you agree with the above statements, I think you'll like this fic. ;-) I would love reviews!

**As It Must Be**

**Prologue**

It all started with the TARDIS.

Rose always knew that the TARDIS was sentient. It was clear from the waves of emotion she'd always felt from her, from the moment she stepped on board the first time. She had always, if perhaps inexplicably, felt for the TARDIS like an old friend.

It hadn't surprised her in the least when she'd found a room for herself in the perfect shade of pink. Or when her favorite breakfast foods were laid out for her in the kitchen in the morning. Or when she had stepped into the wardrobe room for the first time and the racks spun until they settled on the perfect dress in exactly her size for Cardiff in the 1860s.

The Doctor, on the other hand, was more than slightly confused by these developments. Brow furrowed, he would just mutter to himself, "Must be overjoyed to have someone other than cranky old me on board."

It got increasingly strange after the Bad Wolf incident. The memories from that time were slow to filter back and even when she thought she might remember, they seemed more like blur of light and knowledge beyond her comprehension than anything coherent.

But when confronted by the world in need of saving and no Doctor, she could have sworn she actually heard the TARDIS say, _Here, to me_. And she had this awareness of where they were when she stepped out of the TARDIS onto the Sycorax ship which the Doctor always had and which he had tried to explain to her before. A kind of knowing.

And it just kept right on like that. The TARDIS was like a golden presence in her mind constantly giving emotion, speaking, explaining, sharing knowledge, and assisting her directly when the Doctor was poisoned, knocked out, or captured by alien prisons.

The Doctor noticed, of course, but it couldn't be true. Humans simply didn't have the kind of telepathy that she was displaying.

She brushed it off. The TARDIS was just getting to know her better, bonding with her. Surely it had done so with the other companions as well. And anyway, it was all only helpful.

Then there was that time when the TARDIS was lost on the impossible planet and it hurt, was wrenching, more so perhaps even than losing the Doctor to the Isolus. And it hurt in such a similar way. There was the fear of losing a best friend and loved one, but there was also a wrenching stab of emptiness and loss in the back of her mind. She didn't say anything about it to the Doctor. He had enough to deal with already and she must have been making things up.

And now. When he had sent her to the parallel universe without him and without the TARDIS, the pain had been inconceivable. She was not making that up. It was an utter emptiness and isolation that cut and bit and hurt so badly that she felt insane. And then she hit that big yellow button and was back to the proper universe and it was all relieved in an instant. It was all she could do not to jump him when she got back. She wanted to drag him back to the TARDIS and fuck him until he screamed that he would never ever leave her.

She shook herself as he joked and handed her a magnaclamp. What on earth were those thoughts? Dark and possessive and completely inappropriate. The TARDIS, who had been sending her comforting and approving waves of emotion since she made it back to this universe, gave a disapproving snort at this thought.

She shook it off. It wasn't the time to be arguing with the TARDIS.

She clung to the lever minutes later like it was all that was holding her to sanity. Because it was. She was glad, she realized fiercely, that if she slipped off this stupid lever she would be nonexistent. Anything would be better than that horrible aching pain in the other universe.

But then she was falling. Her eyes locked with the Doctors for a long horrible moment and she could suddenly hear him in her head in brilliant, burning clarity, _Rose, rose, rose, rose, rose, no no no._

And the words were accompanied by a blast of overwhelming, intense love. And not a friendly love, but one tinged with a possessive passion which almost frightened her. All this in the instant she as was sucked toward the void. And in despair she shoved a response through her stupid _human_ mind, because he was going to be all alone and she had no idea how he could possibly cope with that in this burning instant.

_I love you, my Doctor_. The words, the emotion, the feel of them visibly rocked him. His eyes went round with shock. And he reached out a tentative, telepathic finger to stroke her mind, obviously forgetting in the shock of this connection that she was falling.

Suddenly someone's arms were around her and she wasn't falling anymore, but standing and plunged into even more pain than the first time she had been here. She let out a cry and crumpled to the ground.

* * *

"What?" He whispered it, incapable of full voice.

He was horrified, paralyzed with the shock that he had gotten in the last few minutes. His mind was doing too many things at once for even him to process. There was, overwhelmingly, pain at the loss of Rose. And then a whole host of shock and confusion at how much it hurt to lose Rose. Of course, he could have told you that losing her would hurt, but this!

This was like someone had sliced open his brain, like his essence was seeping out to the floor. And that was because, because … there was something in his mind which he had hidden from himself! He could see it now, had felt it vividly when Rose had tugged on it as she fell, used it to call to him, to send him her emotions. No one should be able to do that anymore! No one but the Time Lords! And even then, that sort of aching, pulling bond, her possessive ferocity, it was as if …

He couldn't process her loss because he was too absorbed in his discovery. He raced back to the TARDIS. _You knew!_ He shouted mentally. She gave the equivalent of a shrug, weak and hurting. Hurting? The TARDIS gasped and pulled away a mental wall she had been keeping up. The Doctor sank to his knees with the rush of awareness. How could, his Rose was, she had … !

He had certainly noticed oddities in the way the TARDIS acted towards Rose, but attributed it all to his ship's joy at having someone, anyone to cheer him and save him from his self-destructive attitudes before she had gotten there. But there was more to it. There was a bond, stemming from the Heart of the TARDIS, but linking and looping through her timeline and his own. He gaped a little. "Rose and I, we aren't, we aren't linear? But how can that be? I would know! I would remember!"

She shoved weakly at his mind, pointing him to a walled off section. Similar to the wall she had just lifted. He was about to rip away this curtain as well when she sent a stinging reproof. _Not yet!_ He groaned, a little ashamed at her reminder. They hadn't linked to linear yet. He couldn't reveal the memories he had apparently hidden from himself.

_She'll come back to us_. The TARDIS said, slowly regaining strength. _But we need to help her. And not cause a paradox along the way_. This last was directed scornfully at him.

He raised his hands in supplication. "I know, I'm sorry. Just, help me. What do we do now?"


	2. Chapter 1

**A/N: **Thank you all for reading! It's really incredible to me to have people enjoying this little story of mine. :-) You'll be happy to know that it is completed, I just have to go through and edit it all before I post. Enjoy!

**As It Must Be**

**Chapter 1**

Rose collapsed to the ground upon reentry to the Pete's World parallel universe. Some tiny section of her mind which remained clinically detached from the rest of her disastrous body catalogued what had just happened. It was somewhat akin to having been suddenly curled into the most relaxed, warm, and soft state of your entire life – like a giant armchair by a fire – and then being shoved back into a blizzard.

There had been a moment before she crossed. An instant while she was falling, she was quite sure, when the entire world had been right. When she had been full, complete, in a way she hadn't realized she was missing.

Not that any of this was a good thing. After all, those seconds of bliss were really just causing the most unbearable sensation of loss she could possibly imagine. Not to mention the physical pain.

She came back to herself enough to notice that her mum was leaning over her, a panicked expression on her face. "Rose, Rose, what's wrong?"

"My head …" she muttered, tearing up at the effort to catch the words in the storm of her aching brain. There was one section of it in particular that felt as though it had been forcibly ripped from her skull. "it's killing me."

"Pete, what's wrong with her?" Panic was in her mother's voice, "Do something!"

Pete Tyler looked grim. "I've never seen anything like this happen before and we've done quite a bit of experimenting with crossing the void. But we'll get her to a doctor, don't worry." He placed an arm around Jackie's shoulders and squeezed for reassurance, seeming almost unconscious in the gesture. But then both of them jumped away from the contact a little as though realizing what he had done.

They shared a look that was half fear and half awe. It was the look of two people who couldn't quite believe what they had found, but it was quickly broken as Pete spun away and pulled out his phone.

* * *

A universe away, the Doctor was fiddling on the TARDIS. "You know," he mused, "it's really a miracle I'm functional at all right now."

His ship gave a grimacing chuckle. It was strange, he normally couldn't communicate with her like this. It was as if Rose's disappearance had sent his mental connection with her into high definition, snapping it into focus.

_You don't normally need me like this_. She whispered into his mind. _I'm blocking a lot of the pain of the loss of the bond. I might be able to do it for Rose as well … but not both of you and you have a complete bond, she only has half. And I need you functional, my Thief._

"Bond? What does that mean? Is that the …" he made a wild gesture toward the back of his head, which felt as if a hot poker had been stabbed into it. On the bright side, the physical pain was pushing aside some of the sheer emotional panic he was feeling at the knowledge that he might have lost Rose.

His ship hummed in annoyance. _Not important right now. Focus on the task at hand please._

He frowned and turned back to his work, splicing wires together. He could bear the silence for about three seconds before he was back to babbling the pain away. "This is going to work, right?" He tried to maintain a jovial tone, although he wasn't sure who he was trying to fool, since his ship had direct contact to just how much panic he was feeling.

"I mean, it's genius and the dimensional editing of the time vortex into the gaps in the void should manage to fix on her temporal signature and …" his babbling was even less precise than usual, a sure sign of mental damage.

For a moment, he felt the TARDIS actually fix on him completely. A surge of love washed over him. _Oh, my Thief. I promise. We will get our Rose back._

He drew in a deep breath, doing his best to ignore the way he could only half breathe for the hole through both his hearts. "Right. Of course we will. Never doubted it."

_I'm sorry that I can't take anymore of the pain. But you have to manage the rest of it, if I take more it will cut into your personality and your memories. And you need all that to focus and make this work. _Her sympathy only lasted this long though. _So suck it up and get a move on. I need her too._

For one instant he was blown back with a wave of utter agony and despair. He recognized the emotions after they were removed as the rest of his and the TARDIS's current emotions on the loss of Rose. In the moment he was experiencing them, he could think of nothing but the pain.

He rocked back on his heels, humbled by his ship. "Thank you, for taking that."

_Of course._ She said, voice resonant in his mind with all her years and something of the time vortex … something of the Bad Wolf. _Now get her back to us._

He returned to his work, motivation actually trebled, which he would have claimed impossible before.

* * *

"What do you mean, you don't know what's wrong with her?" Jackie Tyler's voice rarely reached so high a pitch, making the Torchwood doctor who had delivered the news and Pete wince at the harsh noise.

"She's not registering on our scans like she should. Look." He held up several dark scans with giant blobs of white in the middle. "This is an MRI. It should show us her brain so we can see if there's any bleeding or damage. Instead, all we get is this mess. She's blown out the machines. I don't really know what more we can do."

Jackie, Pete, and Rose had all been transported to Torchwood's medical facilities as quickly as possible after Rose had collapsed upon coming to the parallel universe, but so far the quick transport seemed useless. Rose was mostly unconscious, tossing and turning. She was drenched in sweat, pale, and occasionally let out little whimpers of pain.

Pete's heart went out to the girl he had refused to believe to be his daughter at first. The tugging at his heartstrings seemed instinctual and hard to deny though. "But you must have some theories?" He implored the doctor.

The man sighed. "The best I can come up with is that she's having a bad reaction to this universe. Some things just aren't meant to be in space and time and I would imagine her being here is one of them."

Pete shook his head, troubled. "No, she was here before! The first time the cybermen came, she was in that war. And she seemed fine that time!" He didn't voice the thought that crossed his mind. That couldn't be the problem because if it was there was no way to fix it. And his broken heart was secondary to the way that Jackie was falling apart at her daughter's bedside, stroking her sweaty hand.

The doctor frowned. "Well is there anything different about this time? The barriers are completely cut off, maybe …"

He was interrupted by Rose suddenly shooting up in the bed. Her eyes were open and though she was grimacing with pain, there was a glowing awareness of her surroundings in her eyes. The other three started and stared at her, transfixed.

She was … Pete rubbed his eyes, sure he was seeing something. But no, there was an actual golden glow surrounding his sort-of-daughter. It sparkled in her eyes and seemed to halo her entire body, as though she was backed by a setting sun.

"I need to go back." Her voice had a strange depth to it. "I cannot stay here, I need to go back."

"Sweetheart, no!" Jackie clutched at her hand. "You can't, the walls of this universe are shut! What's wrong, what can we do?"

Rose turned toward her mother and some of the intensity of the glow faded. "I'm so sorry Mum. I'm going to miss you so much. But I need to go back. I can't live without him. I just can't."

Pete frowned. He had known that there was something between his daughter and the Doctor, but hadn't realized it had gone this far. Although she had refused to leave the original universe the first time because of him. "I know it seems bad now, Rose, but I promise you it gets better." A shadow of pain crossed his face and he knew his statement to be a partial lie. Some of it never got better.

She turned her gaze to him. "Not this, Pete Tyler. This will not get better. This will kill her if she is not returned. Time demands it." Her voice had gotten more resonant, the glow coming back in full force.

She shook herself, fading the glow again. "I'm sorry, Pete, it really isn't up to me anymore." There was a tiny bit of regret in her voice, but mostly it was awe. She turned back to her mother. "Mum, I'm so sorry that I'm going to have to leave. But you have to know, it's for the best. I'm going to have the best life with him. The absolute best. And you, you're going to be just …"

The glow flared up again, leaving Rose almost too bright to look at for a moment before it faded. After, she was beaming. "Oh you're going to be so happy here. Don't let memories of me get in the way of that, all right? I love you. I love you both so much."

"Rose, what are you talking about?" Jackie cried, "There is no way back! The void is closed!"

Rose herself settled back to the bed. The glow had faded to an almost imperceptible level and she was beginning to whimper with pain again, "It hurts." She murmured.

"Can't you give her something for the pain?" He pled with Torchwood's doctor, who looked more than a little shell shocked at the scene he'd just witnessed.

"Sure," He said, hurrying over to her IVs.

Pete moved behind Jackie and placed bracing hands on her shoulders. "It's going to be okay, Jacks, we're going to work this out."

* * *

"And this goes there and that goes over there and …" The Doctor was dancing madly around the console room, adding bits and pieces to the machine sticking out from one of the panels seemingly at random.

The TARDIS stroked his mind, _Yes, we've almost got it_.

"Oh yes! Just one more …" He rushed over to duck beneath the opposite side of the console and tore an object vaguely resembling a ping pong ball out from beneath the panels. He rushed over and shoved it in the center of the mess of wires and metal. The TARDIS had let out a little pained moan at him ripping out her insides, but it was quickly assuaged by checking the machine the two of them had managed to create.

_This should be perfect. I think I can work with this_. She continued to feel out the new machine they had created together, feeling it channel timelines, allow her to focus the vortex to locate and … yes she could just shift them, press and pull the way she needed to. Perfect!

"Work with it!" Her Doctor was acting affronted to cover the sheer glee he was feeling. It was coming out in his body language though as he danced from foot to foot. "I've created a masterpiece!"

The TARDIS's joy at getting Rose back ever so soon was enough to let his typically egotistical comment slide.

"Okay, okay, let's fire this baby up! Should just take a little bit of the vortex and a little bit of you and …" As he spoke, he was spinning around the console, whipping off his brainy specs as he moved from detail work to slamming at the TARDIS, flipping switches and banging on levers. "Brilliant!" He beamed as the ping pong ball in the middle of his mass of junk lit up a bright gold.

_Don't get ahead of yourself_, the TARDIS reproved. _We need to do this together. You're going to need to meld with me, my Thief._

The Doctor frowned. Mind melding with one's TARDIS was not typically an accepted practice on Gallifrey. He'd done it when he first met his TARDIS, needed to in order to quickly pick up all the workings of the old model and convince her to fly with him. But typically using telepathy to bond with a sentient being was considered intimate in the extreme and not to be done, especially with a TARDIS. It was a little like having sex with one's car in a way.

The TARDIS sent him a wave of disapproval so harsh he winced. _I am far more than a car, my Thief!_

"I know, I know, I'm sorry! Old prejudices!" He drew in a deep breath. This wasn't something Gallifrey would accept. Not at all. But Gallifrey was gone. All that was left was his dear old girl and his Rose. And he was going to lose both of them if he couldn't get over himself and do what needed to be done. "I just, as much as I disagreed with them, I hate to turn away from them now." His voice was low and apologetic, but also pained.

The TARDIS sent him a wave of sympathy, followed by a reproof. _You need to turn away from it. You did with Rose at the end, did you not? _

He felt a wave of overwhelming emotion at the reminder. Yes, the connection between their minds had been intense and not something that Gallifrey would approve of, they who strove to reduce all relations to a purely scientific and professional level. "You're right." He spoke aloud, although he knew she didn't need to hear it. "All right. Here we go."

He pressed forward mentally, ignoring the years of training telling him that this was wrong. And then he was connected with the absolute gold of his ship, shocked by the love and rightness he felt. _My thief_, she breathed and the words weren't just in the front of his mind as they normally were, but all throughout him, resonating through his body. _Yes, my dear girl_. He whispered back to her.

There was a infinite moment while both of them, Time Lord and time ship, of sheer appreciation of their connection. They resonated together, a bonding far deeper than the superficial telepathic communication they usually used. They gasped together, marveled together at all of time and space that they could see, at the looping timelines before them, at the miraculous fact that their current connection was. _Meant to be. This is what must be. _Their timeline burned brilliantly through the fabric of the universe.

_Focus_. One or both of them brought their combined attention back to the task. _Must find ours. Meant to be._ Indeed, the looping of dazzling timelines made it clear it was so. It was humbling, awe-inspiring, but also filled them with a sense of utter power, the power to control the timelines they saw, such power …

_No!_ This time, it was clearly the TARDIS who said it, pulling away from her Time Lord long enough to regain some of the clarity of all her centuries without him, of her higher awareness of the fabric of space and time. _We can only nudge. It will be enough._

The Doctor shook himself out of the haze of deluded power he had slipped into. _Of course. Right._ Their minds melded again more completely, this time with purpose and not simply in awe of the connection.

_Find her_. Together they crossed a bridge between fabrics of timelines, the void between universes. And there, there! A timeline not connected to the others in this universe, a slightly too brilliant gold. Both of them were knocked back by a wave of adoration upon simply viewing this particular timeline.

_Ours_. The possessive thought was certain, sure of itself and its belonging. _Bring her back to us._

Together they reached out and grabbed at her timeline. It shouldn't have been possible, time didn't work like that, but there they were doing it anyway. Ah, the possibilities in a world without Gallifrey. The Doctor was so removed from himself that he barely felt the wave of usual guilt at the thought.

But as they pulled Rose's timeline back over the void, they felt a resistance. _What, no!_ She was halfway back toward them, mostly across the void, but while they were slipping magnetically back into their own time stream, she wasn't fitting as she should. Like trying to press the wrong sides of magnets together, she seemed repelled from the time and place she had disappeared from. Instead she was pulling back and away, somewhere else in their universe.

_No! Come back! _They pulled, but didn't dare press too hard, terrified of the ramifications of breaking her timeline. But she was slipping away from them, slipping, where?

The TARDIS realized first and drew away, pulling the Doctor's mind with her as she went, despite his protestations. _Look_, she whispered to him, _pay attention_.

He looked, finally noticed where exactly his Rose was slipping away to. It was a little hazy. And hazy in a familiar way. The way his timeline always appeared to him when he tried to see the future or the future of people who would play a major part in it.

_But that's …_ he whispered, incredulous, to his TARDIS. _I don't remember that!_ She nudged him again toward the walled off part of his mind.

_I knew this already. Binding with you, your mind made me forget. You are very limited, Time Lord_. The Doctor's affront at this statement was muted by his shock at just where Rose's timeline was being yanked off to, slipping in like she fit.

_It makes sense._ The TARDIS said, smugly. _Easier to get through to you at the weakest point in your timeline. And besides, it has always happened this way._ _Now let her go, my Thief_.

It was only when she said this into his mind that the Doctor realized that he was still mentally clutching to Rose's timeline. _I don't, I can't …_

The TARDIS grew firm. _You must. It's up to her now. You've done all you can and must now trust in her to come back to you._

Letting go of Rose went against every instinct he possessed. Even if it was to a previous version of him. Not keeping her with him, not holding her to him with everything he had was wrong in the most basic of ways. But what the TARDIS said … if he believed in one thing, if he was to have blind faith in only one thing in the entire universe, it would be in Rose.

_Yes._ And with wrenching heartbreak and utter trust, he let Rose's timeline slip out of his mental hands and slide to where it belonged. _I love you, Rose Tyler_. The certainty was brilliant in his mind. _Now come back to me._

* * *

With a gasp, Rose sat up in the bed in Torchwood again, gold sparks back at full fury in her eyes. Pete and Jackie, who had been sitting rather close on the couch by her bed, shot up to stand beside her.

The sparks faded as quickly as they'd come and left Rose gasping and pale on the bed, looking up at her mother and quasi-father with passion in her eyes.

"I'm going to disappear in a minute. I saw, I saw …" She faded off, unequal to describing what it was like when she was glowing and full of the time vortex. "I'm sorry, Mum, I don't want to leave you, but it will better for you here, I promise. Tony – you have to tell him how much I love him."

"Disappear?!" Jackie cried, "What do you mean, disappear? You can't! Disappear where? And who's Tony? I don't know any –"

"Mum!" Rose interrupted, "This is important and I don't have much time. You have to listen to me! You'll know when you need to, but the sparkling I was doing? It was showing me a lot of what's going to happen, what has to happen, what could happen. And this is the best." She faded into a slightly dreamy look, a golden glow flushing only over her eyes.

She blinked her eyes clear again and focused on Pete. "You would have been my father in every way if I had stayed. I know. And I love you for it. Thank you."

She turned to her mother and grasped one of her hands in both of hers. "I love you Mum. I know it wasn't always perfect, but I know you did your absolute best with me and I appreciate it so much. You're brilliant. Tell Mickey I love him, okay? And Tony, don't forget. And … be happy for me. Just live a fantastic life. And I promise I will too."

"But where are you going? Rose!" Jackie's other hand had somehow found Pete's in the panic and it felt right there, an anchor in the storm of emotion that was her daughter saying goodbye. "You can't leave us!"

"I have to, Mum. I have to go back to him. You know it." There was a calm, a joy, in Rose's voice, which made Jackie feel the same certainty deep in her heart. But just because she felt how certain this was didn't mean she had to like it.

"You can't! It isn't possible!"

Rose turned to her and smiled faintly. "I like impossible. I'm about to leave, he's taking me back. I love you!"

Tears were pouring down Jackie's face, her make up streaming down her cheeks. "Rose I- " But before she could finish the sentence, Rose Tyler had disappeared.

Jackie made a keening noise and fell onto the bed where her daughter had just been. Pete moved both arms around her shoulders automatically, hugging her from behind in a way that should have felt awkward, but really just felt like holding on. "It's okay Jacks." He whispered, somehow knowing that he spoke the truth. "She's back where she belongs."

* * *

Indeed, one universe away, Rose Tyler was very much where she belonged. And that was facing the inside of the doors of one 1950s police box which was so much more than that.

As she arrived, she was met with a questioning wave of defensive sensation by the TARDIS.

She frowned. She'd never felt such an attack from the TARDIS before. Usually she was greeted with warmth! And coming from being trapped in the parallel universe, she would have expected the equivalent of a fervent embrace from her beloved ship.

Not important. She brushed away the concern, sent the TARDIS a wave of warm affection, and turned around to face the interior of the TARDIS.

And received an utter shock. Because what she was facing was not the console room she loved so much, but a smoking wreck of burning dark wood and scorch marks with debris flung throughout. Rose let out a shocked moan of horror. What had happened while she was gone?! She reached out to the ship with even more love and support, as well as a gentle curiosity. But before she could register the ship's response, she noticed something perhaps more shocking than the smoking and destroyed room.

By the broken console lay a man. He was wearing the shreds of what looked like a velvet coat from the Renaissance era. And he was half covered with strut from the beautiful ship, dark blood evident from her position across the room.

But more shocking than any of that was that she recognized him. It was the Doctor. But not the Doctor she had left hours earlier. No, this was clearly her first Doctor.


	3. Chapter 2

**A/N: **Chapter two! I just want to thank everyone who has reviewed and favorited! It's really incredible to know people are actually liking and following this story. Fingers crossed you continue to enjoy! Let me know what you think and it'll encourage me to get chapter three edited and posted faster!

**As It Must Be**

**Chapter 2**

Rose gasped and moved fully into the TARDIS. Her initial shock was fading quickly into a desperate need to help, to fix. She could feel the pain of the man before her as though he were radiating it forth and there was nothing she could do but attempt to fix it, fix him.

Well, to the best of her ability at least. She had no illusions about what she was being faced with. When she'd recognized the broken man in the console room, facts had snapped into place for her. This was her Doctor and her TARDIS right after the time war. She wasn't sure how she had ended up here, but a large part of her was overjoyed to be just where she was. Ever since she had learned about the Time War, she had wished that she could do something to help. And now here she was, a man to patch up, a time ship to repair, physical things she could do to try and mend some of the immeasurable damage done to the man she loved so completely.

Before she knew what she was doing, she found herself bent over the side of the Doctor. He was breathing and both hearts were beating, so despite the blood seeping from wounds all over his body and the unnatural angles at which his right arm and left leg were resting, she knew the TARDIS was going to have to be her first priority at the moment. The defensive confusion which she had faced when she first entered had not gone away with the waves of love she had sent the ship and nothing was going to get done here if the TARDIS didn't trust her.

She drew in a deep breath and tested out some of what she thought might be telepathy that she had done with the Doctor while she was falling. She brushed aside the concerns that the Doctor had told her – namely that humans were decidedly not telepathic.

_Hello? _She asked, wincing with a sudden ache in her head from the force of her own push to get the words out of the confines of her own brain.

There was a long moment of silence when even the hum of the time rotor seemed to quiet down. Then, a murmur of actual words in her head. _You don't need to send your thoughts to me child. I know it hurts you. You can simply talk and let me do the work._

Rose gaped. Never had the TARDIS spoken to her in full sentences like this before. Feelings, emotions, knowledge, sure. But dialogue, like she was a person – never!

Responding to those unspoken thoughts, the TARDIS showed her a flash of the man lying at her feet. _Desperate times._ There was a wave of worry edging onto panic.

Rose sympathized entirely with the emotion. "He's going to be okay. I think I can promise. I'm … from his future I think? I was in a parallel universe and I think that the Doctor brought me back, but I came to the wrong time. I mean, he doesn't know me yet."

There was another long pause, then a hesitant, _May I?_ The TARDIS was brushing at the edges of her mind and Rose could feel it, somehow knew exactly what the sensation was.

"Of course!" She said, without even wondering at the ease of the decision. "I trust you completely. Do I need to … do anything?"

The ship seemed almost amused. _No, little human. I was just asking to be polite._ Rose ignored the insinuation beneath the statement that she would have done it regardless of Rose's response to the question.

She could feel the ship slip inside her mind, feel her flipping through her memories, although Rose chose not to watch the reel with her. She allowed herself a moment of concern, letting the thought come to the forefront of her mind, _Shouldn't we be worried about timelines? You shouldn't know all this, right?_

The TARDIS was obviously amused this time. _I'm a TARDIS. Trust me, there is no need to worry about timelines with me. Now hush and let me watch._

It could only have been minutes, but seemed much longer as Rose waited for some sort of verdict from the ship. The time dragged and Rose fought back her instinctive impatience to ultimate payoff when the TARDIS released her mind with a long mental sigh.

_I have seen your memories and I have examined the time lines. I would never have believed it possible, but … you are real._ Rose smiled at the fact in the TARDIS's statement.

"I am, yes." She replied aloud. "Although I don't really know what I am. So if you could clarify that, it would be great. But maybe after I …" She gestured to the man still lying sprawled on the ground, whom she had been hyperaware of throughout this conversation. It was only knowledge that she desperately needed the TARDIS's approval that had kept her from him thus far.

_Yes, please, help me care for my Thief, pup._ Rose was only able to briefly register the (hopefully) affectionate name the TARDIS had bestowed upon her before a door appeared at the closest wall, one which hopefully lead to the medbay. _Yes, I'm sorry, I can't manage much right now. Even talking to you is … a strain._

Rose registered just how exhausted the mental voice of the TARDIS sounded, how faint the hum of the time rotor, and how the scorch marks and smoke had only increased since she had entered the ship. "Oh no!" Suddenly she was firm. "Take care of yourself. I promise I will take care of him."

The ship reached out to her mentally again with something akin to awe. She instinctually reached back and when the two telepathic fingers brushed, they seemed to lock together. A blast of love blew through her mind and when Rose had recovered from the overwhelming sensation, she found that there was a golden presence in the back of her mind again, one she hadn't realized just how much she had missed.

_My pup._ The wonder in the TARDIS's mental voice resonated inside her mind now rather than brushing only surface level. _Thank you. For it all._

Rose grinned for the first time since falling through to the parallel universe. "No, thank you. Now get to fixing yourself so that we can both focus on fixing him. I have a feeling he's going to need it."

It was a very strong feeling too, beyond even her knowledge that the Time War had damaged her Doctor in ways he still hadn't healed from as far on as when she had left him. No, she could sense it in the same way she could feel the TARDIS's hesitance the moment she came aboard. She was currently facing a man shattered beyond her comprehension. And she wasn't sure that she had the strength or wisdom to pull him back.

But then, what could she do but try? And with that she began pulling his large body toward the newly appeared door.

Fifteen feet was a far longer distance than it sounded when one was hefting a man twice your size with injuries that looked life threatening. Rose was glad he wasn't conscious, as she was sure he would have been in excruciating pain if he was, especially from those obviously broken limbs.

She did manage to maneuver him to the med bay, finally faced only with the conundrum of getting him onto the bed which awaited him. Mercifully, the TARDIS seemed to be monitoring her progress, hopefully only slightly, and took this opportunity to lower the bed to the ground. Rose pushed and pulled his solid limbs onto the mattress before it raised back to its normal height.

The TARDIS brushed her mind in affection before returning to whatever maintenance she was working on. Rose almost let out a sob at the familiarity of the gesture, realizing with it just how terrified she had been not to be recognized by her beloved ship. But this … perhaps they could resume their usual relationship faster than she had feared.

She regained her focus, not hard, since a large part of her mind hadn't left the Doctor since she had first seen him bleeding on the floor. "What can we do to fix you up, hm?" She asked, with false levity. She couldn't stand the silence, especially with the weakened hum of the TARDIS in the background. And an unconscious Doctor seemed so deeply wrong.

She worked while keeping up a constant chatter, all of it inane and based purely on what she was doing now, what the scans found, what she was going to do next. She was grateful, for about the hundredth time, for all that her Doctor and the TARDIS had taught her over the last year or so about how to work the equipment in their med bay. Useful stuff when travelling with an alien who was injured more often than he could heal himself.

She managed to patch up most of the injuries and mend the broken bones without removing any of his torn clothing, but once all major injuries had been healed, their removal was the obvious next step.

"I know you wouldn't appreciate some random ape taking off your clothes, but it really is for the best. And I'm doing my best to maintain your boundaries …" She really was. She hadn't even brushed his mind, despite the aching pain he was releasing and how much she wanted to help heal that like she was his broken bones and ripped flesh. "But there's really no sense in keeping this up."

She refused to acknowledge even to herself that part of the reason she was eager to remove his clothes was that anything other than leather and dark jeans on this beloved frame seemed wrong. Especially this foppish coat. She spared a moment to mourn the regeneration she had never known who had chosen such a romantic garment. _I'm sure I would have liked you. _She thought to that version of him.

But this, her first doctor, he seemed unprotected, naked, and wrong in these clothes which were so clearly not his own. "Off we go!" She said, attempting a façade of joviality.

This is not going to be sexual. She told herself with a firmness that she was not feeling. Perhaps if she repeated the sentiment enough, it would be true.

The fact was, as she admitted to herself as she carefully pulled his jacket off of his newly repaired arms, this version of her Doctor had always been so intensely sexual in her mind that it was hard to make anything he did or she did to him less than. With her new Doctor, she could sometimes fool herself into believing that they were just friends, siblings of an intensely close, physical, and rather incestual sort. The sexual tension never went away for her, but with this version of the Doctor … it had been at a whole different intensity really.

It probably all went back to that first time he had told her to forget him. You just couldn't do that sort of thing to an impressionable girl and expect her not to base every sexual fantasy from there on out on you. Or maybe it was the leather. Leather and blue eyes and longing glances. Yum.

"I am getting very distracted." She said out loud, as if stating it to no one would make her pay more attention than scolding herself mentally. "Off we go!"

She was unbuttoning his shirt now and staying removed was more important and more difficult than ever. God that chest … she had longed for so long to see that chest. And she had such vivid memories of undressing him in his next regeneration and while overjoyed to see that body without the clothing of his previous self, she had intensely mourned the fact that she would never see her first Doctor without his usual get up.

_Keep it professional, Rose_. She moved fingers which were definitely not shaking down his chest to his trousers. And if the tips dragged along his abdomen just a little bit at the end, it was definitely unintentional. She carefully unbuttoned and unzipped him, then began to pull down the material. At first they caught his pants as well and she let out an audible gasp she would never admit to at the sight of narrow hip bones and indentations leading down to something she was sure would be even better than hip bones. She froze and pulled up his black boxer-briefs to cover the obscenely attractive sight.

Down went the trousers again, skimming along legs which were made for running. Well-toned already even though this particular body had done no running at all yet. It was unavoidable that her fingertips stroked all along his legs – she had to get his trousers down somehow! And if her pulse had increased and breath stuttered at the rock hard muscle and course hair which covered him, well he would never know.

She was briefly stymied when she realized he was still wearing shoes, but removed them quickly and then let out a deep sigh at having successfully completed the task of clothing removal with a minimum of inappropriate contact. She congratulated herself as much as she had after stripping the pinstriped regeneration she had just left on Christmas Eve. Then she reluctantly pulled a conveniently located blanket over him and dragged over a chair which had recently appeared so that she could sit next to his bedside.

There wasn't much she could do now. All his physical injuries that she could fix had been fixed. It was now just a waiting game, really. Hopefully the unconsciousness he was now experiencing was just that same sort of healing coma that he had been in the last time (next time?) he had regenerated.

Almost involuntarily, she raised a hand to stroke his hair and face. She had missed this version of him so much. Not that she didn't adore the wild hair and flirty grins of her new Doctor, but this version held a piece of her heart he would never relinquish. Those big ears, flawless cheekbones, incredible eyes … she caressed his face in endless longing to see them open up and smile at her again. That smile! The one that had really only emerged for her.

She tore her hand away as it edged toward his lips. This was very wrong. She was taking advantage of him. He had no idea who she was and she knew that he would never stand for such caressing even if he had known her.

She squared her shoulders, stood up, and spared him one last longing look before removing herself from the med bay. "All right old girl, what can I do to help?" She asked the TARDIS.

A grateful sigh met her request, along with an image of the smoldering boards along her walls. Rose grinned wide. Sure, it wasn't much and she was sure that the Doctor or even Jack would have been able to be much more useful, but god it would be nice to help in anyway during this awful time for both her Doctor and his time ship.

As she reached the console room and began to pull boards off the walls and pile them near the console, she reflected on just how miraculous it was that she was here. Yes, her mother was gone, but she had been in the process of leaving home for years now. And now she could finally help, be there for her Doctor in the time when he had needed someone the most. That was truly a gift.

As if she had been listening in on Rose's thoughts, the TARDIS replied to this monologue with a small glow of warmth. It wasn't anywhere near the affection the TARDIS had begun to send her in her own time, but it was better than anything she had gotten yet. She hoped that was also a sign of the TARDIS strengthening.

She smiled around, tentatively sending the affection right back. "There's nowhere I would rather be!" She said to the ship, feeling only a tiny bit silly for talking to an empty room.

She continued musing because it was nice not to be in silence. "You like that I … care about him so much, don't you? Because I do. I really do. I would do anything for him." She meant it and spent a moment in silence contemplating how complete that statement was. "And I love you too, you know. Or I will. Time travel, it's confusing." She smiled again, then grimaced as she yanked harder on a particularly stubborn board.

Finally the board pulled away and she fell back onto her bum, clutching on to the charred wood. "Whoops!" Her hard landing was made easier by the near chuckles she could sense from the TARDIS. Oh, this was so much better than the suspicion from when she had first come in! She grinned with her beloved ship and stood back up. "Oi, don't laugh at the girl trying to help!"

Upon standing, she was treated to a view of what stood behind the wood she had pulled away. "Oooh, you're beautiful." She cooed in awe and pride. In fact, she would have noticed that her voice rather imitated her second Doctor, if she'd been paying enough attention. Beneath the smoking wood lay the organic gratework that she was used to in her own TARDIS.

"Look at you! Just beautiful. You don't need any of this ugly wood covering this up! You're organic and gorgeous." She brought her hand up to stroke the grating on the wall, almost petting the TARDIS with pure love and affection. She felt her hand met by a pulse of warmth that came simultaneously from her palm and the golden presence in the back of her mind.

The two spent a long moment just contemplating one another. And then she drew her hand down again and cheerfully said, "Back to work!" Before pulling at another board.

She wasn't sure how long it was later, but it must have been quite a few hours, when she was interrupted from her near therapeutic demolition task by a wave of concern from the TARDIS. "What is it, is he okay?" She asked, alarmed for the Doctor.

_Child, _the voice echoed through her mind again and she almost fell to her knees at the welcome sensation. There was a trace of amusement in her mind and then the TARDIS spoke again._ You have done well but you need to rest. And I have reached a point where I can do more without you prodding at my walls._

She frowned, but slowly moved away from the walls. "If you're sure, I guess I'll go check on the Doctor. But let me know as soon as I can help again!"

The TARDIS voiced a wordless denial. _No, here, child. I do not want my Thief to wake up while you sleep by him._ Rose was blown away by the protectiveness of the message. And protectiveness not of the Doctor from a stranger, but of her from him when he found a stranger in the TARDIS.

Another brush of affection passed over her and then she felt a nudge toward the other side of the console from where she had been working where she found a mattress-like patch worked into the ground accompanied by a lump that would be a serviceable pillow and one blanket.

Her eyes glazed with tears a little at the gesture when the TARDIS had so much other work to do. The gratitude she tried to fling at the ship was completely genuine. _It was nothing pup_. She responded with a firm negative and gratefully slipped down to the cot. She hadn't been tired when the TARDIS first asked, but now she found that she was dozing off immediately upon lying down. It had been a long day.

* * *

Rose opened her eyes what seemed like only moments later, but in a very different state, shockingly well rested. It had been an extraordinarily long day complete with believing she was never going to get back to the TARDIS, so her hum now was more soothing than ever.

She levered herself up and bounced on her heels. This action was met by a questioning nudge from the TARDIS, confused. _Why are you awake?_ The ship asked. Rose started a little, still not used to receiving actual words and sentences from the ship, especially when they resonated through her skull so deeply.

"Not tired anymore! What can I do?" She was eager for more fixing, although now that she thought about it, perhaps she should check on the Doctor first. With how well-rested she was, it might have been a full day since she'd left him in the med bay.

These thoughts allowed her to miss the confusion from the TARDIS, until she voiced her thoughts. _Pup, it's only been two hours. _

Rose frowned in confusion. "No, it must have been longer, I feel great again!" The ship gave the equivalent of a mental grimace. "Right, time ship. I'm sure you're right, but I feel fine. Must just be the relief of being back here then! Now, what do I do!"

There was a pause, then a mental shrug and she was assigned back to pulling up boards. "Great, now let me just go check on the Doctor first!"

The ship sent a flare of worry, but she could tell it was for her and not the Doctor. "What's wrong with you? Aren't you worried about him too?"

_He'll be fine. Just in a healing trance. And I don't want you there when he wakes up my pup. He is so very …_ instead of a word the TARDIS sent a blast of emotion – rage, grief, violence, despair. _I'm sorry for that, _she said, as Rose cringed away from the feelings which had faded fast, _but I needed you to understand that seeing a stranger right now would be very bad for both of you_.

Rose nodded slowly, reflecting on the ship's belief. "I suppose … but I – he's hurt and not going to care for him is just wrong."

The ship gave her another affectionate caress. _I am watching over him for both of us pup._

She sighed and turned back to the wall, prying off another board. "Well, you always know best!"

Rose wasn't sure how long things continued in this vein, working long hours in the timelessness of the console room interrupted by sleeping when the TARDIS told her to on the same cot. As days went on her bed because more than a soft patch in the floor, gaining more fluffy blankets, pillows, a bouncy mattress and a thick duvet, but Rose still only needed what the TARDIS insisted was two or three hours of sleep every night.

The progress of time was marked mostly by watching the console room become the way she had seen it when she first stepped onto the TARDIS. "Isn't this a paradox," she mused to the ship one day, "I mean, you've seen what you're supposed to look like in my memories, so you're making it like that. But where did the original layout come from?" The question baffled the TARDIS, and convinced Rose that as human as the ship had come to seem to her in the last few days, their conceptions of time and causality were radically different.

It was a few days later while Rose was tinkering around under the console and reflecting on just how often she had watched the Doctor do just this, when she became aware that the TARDIS was worried. She and the TARDIS still weren't what they had been when she had left her other Doctor's timeline, but they had grown quite close and her feelings were always present as though through a haze in her mind.

"What's up?" She asked, putting down the wires she was trying to connect so that she didn't electrocute herself while she talked to the TARDIS.

_My connection to the time vortex has been damaged by the time war. The entire vortex is in upheaval really, so I don't know how the reconnection will go. It will be different after, but …_ worry suffused the mental tone and the ship almost was babbling like the Doctor would. _I've been trying to put it off until the Doctor could assist. But it's become an emergency._

"Can I help at all?" Rose volunteered. She knew she had lots of limitations that the Doctor didn't, but maybe there was something. "How long until the Doctor wakes up? Can you tell?"

The TARDIS was troubled still. _I'm not sure. That's why I hesitate, pup. I do not wish to leave you here alone when he wakes up. I think he will be distraught and not act with rationality. He has always been emotional, my Thief, but this. I will not have you hurt pup._

"He won't hurt me." Rose said with a confidence she didn't quite feel. She hadn't seen the Doctor since leaving him in the medbay, but she had never felt the kind of hurt and rage she knew him to be feeling. He might be capable of any number of things right now. "You need to do whatever you have to. You've been expending too much energy on me anyway."

Rose suspected that the TARDIS was infusing her with energy, causing the brief and ridiculously restful hours of sleep she was getting. She knew the TARDIS still felt bad for doubting her at first, especially now that they were so close.

_I have no choice or I would not do this. _The TARDIS whispered. _But I must or risk falling apart and losing you both as well as tearing apart the timeline. I do not know how long it will be until I can focus on what is happening here again. I will go now and hope that he still sleeps when I awake – I would force him to sleep, but I dare not interfere with the healing trance._

"Stop worrying!" Rose forced a grin. Honestly, she hadn't been concerned about the Doctor's reaction until the TARDIS had terrified her with all this. "We're going to be fine. Now go!"

With one last crashing wave of love for Rose, the TARDIS vanished from her mind to a pinprick in the back, much as when she was far away from the ship. She blinked at the suddenness of the sensation and then turned slowly around the console room, suddenly hyperaware that she hadn't actually spoken to or seen anyone in perhaps a week. She spared a longing glance at the door to the medbay, then heeded the TARDIS's cautions and turned away.

Back to work. Maybe she could finish up her most recent task before the TARDIS got back! She slid back under the console and focused back in on wires.

Connecting the wires was a surprisingly engaging undertaking, not one she would ever have anticipated enjoying, but here she was. In fact, she was so caught up that she thought it must have been hours when she was interrupted by a sound. It took her a moment to blink out of the daze of machinery and register what the noise had been, it had been that long since she had heard anything other than herself and the hum of the TARDIS.

But then she did recognize it and scrambled out from under the console. No good hiding, she needed to face the music. Because the sound had been the medbay door opening and closing and then heavy footfalls on the grating.

She scrambled clumsily to her feet and was staring straight into eyes she never thought she would see again. And before she could feel joyous about that, she registered that they were glaring at her with a rage and dark fire which stole her breath.

"Doctor," she whispered, almost involuntarily.


	4. Chapter 3

**A/N:** So, this would be the time at which I point out the rating for this fic. This chapter is definitely not for kids! A big thanks again to everyone reading and especially those who've taken the time to review! It means the world to me! Enjoy. :-)

**As It Must Be**

**Chapter 3**

Rose was startled by the sheer number of thoughts flying through her mind upon seeing the Doctor. There was utter happiness, sure, but it was mostly being overcome by all the other emotions.

There was a large degree of self-consciousness. This was the first time he was ever seeing her and she was wearing a white tank top and a casual pair of jeans that the Tardis had delivered to her. And she was smudged all over with dark grease from the depths of the console, a large patch of which she was unconsciously scrubbing at with her fingers on the hem of her shirt. And her hair was a disaster, pulled into a messy ponytail when she'd first delved under the console when she woke up.

She was surveying him at the same time, gasping a little, hopefully inaudibly, at his characteristic outfit. He could have been right out of one of her memories, all boots and dark jeans and jumper and that jacket which had been involved in so many tight hugs and fantasies.

And then there was just the tiniest touch of fear. There were emotions in his eyes which she had only seen directed at threats to their lives before. She called this look his oncoming storm look and she had never expected to see it directed at her.

And okay, that fear was accompanied by a touch of something she refused to completely own up to, a burning in the pit of her stomach resulting from those darkened eyes and leather jacket and then the predatory way he began walking across the console room toward her … she bit off both a moan and this train of thought as quickly as she could, although perhaps not very effectively. There had always been something about this regeneration. Her first Doctor, her lonely Doctor. Her leather-clad, broad-shouldered, masculine as sin Doctor.

_Definitely not the time._ She scolded herself as he stepped further into the console room. His glare was fixed on her. She had a flashback to seeing a similar stony look after she caused a paradox that almost resulted in the end of the Earth when she'd saved her father's life. But this time, she didn't have the confidence she'd had then that he cared too much about her to act on the expression.

"Who are you?" His voice was rumbling and gravelly. Rose shivered. From fear and concern, of course, not from the way his tone sent a giddy part of her to melting.

Mm, a more complicated question than he could possibly know, she mused. And then wondered madly why she hadn't thought about this encounter more. You'd think she would have been fixating on what exactly she needed to say to him when he woke up, but she'd been so concerned with his health that it hadn't even really occurred to her.

"Um, a friend." She offered, hesitantly.

He'd kept stalking forward and was now pacing slowly around the console toward her. She watched him spare a few glances around to the new layout of the console room and experienced a burst of pride. She loved this room and she'd helped the Tardis put it together. Well, not that she'd actually that done much, but still!

"I've never seen you before." He said with certainty. "How did you get here? What are you?"

"Well, no, you wouldn't have." She said, a little inanely. "I, um, I walked in. And I'm …" It suddenly occurred to her what species that he might hope she was when he asked that last question. "Oh, god, I'm sorry. I'm just human."

There was an instant where pure devastation crossed his face before he could slam the guarded look back down. But, oh, in that instant. She had never seen the Doctor in a fraction of so much pain. And she'd seen him in what she'd thought were some low moments.

"Doctor –" The word was torn from her nearly involuntarily. She reached out with a hand towards him, forgetting the worry and fear she'd had before, now just wanting to comfort him.

He pulled back and away from her even though he was still more than an arm length away. She felt a little crushed at his refusal to accept her comfort, but then reminded herself that there was more at stake here than her hugging him.

Although god, didn't that thought sound lovely. She would love to wrap herself around him and never let go, prevent the universe from needing him for a while so that he could just heal up here in her arms.

She brushed that thought away too. He was still watching her warily. "You just walked in? That's impossible. You need a key. And the Tardis wouldn't let some stranger in."

She frowned at him, unreasonably stung. "Good thing I'm not some stranger then, isn't it? And I have a key!"

She had fished the key out of the neckline of her shirt before she could come to her senses. Oh, she definitely should not be telling him about having a key. Hadn't she learned anything about paradoxes? She had such a temper sometimes.

The Doctor's eyebrows were furrowed and focused on the Yale key swinging from the chain around her neck. "Where did you get that?" He asked and moved his hand towards her, taking a few steps along with it. She swung the key away from him and back in her shirt.

"Dunno." She said, and looked away from him. Not telling him the truth was harder than she might have expected, especially when there weren't any lies that particularly made sense.

"Don't give me that." He snapped at her. "That's a key to the Tardis. And I don't just hand those out to anyone. And I certainly haven't handed one out to you. I would remember."

He looked suddenly apprehensive. "Unless I've forgotten something?" His eyes shot to hers again, which was a good thing, since he'd been fixating on the scooped neckline of her shirt. And though she knew it was about the key and not her breasts, his fixation was still distracting her from the situation at hand.

Speaking of which, "Oh, no, you haven't forgotten anything. You just haven't met me yet." She winced a little, but figured there wasn't much of a way around that one. "Look, I just saw the Tardis, stepped in, found you, cleaned the place up a bit and waited around for you to wake up. And figured you could maybe get me back to where I'm supposed to be."

He'd folded his arms across his chest while she spoke and now leaned back against the console as though considering her words. They were certainly an oversimplification, but explaining the details would really be risking a paradox. Her own thoughts were cut off at the same moment his seemed to be – when his back hit the console.

He spun around in horror to stare at the rotor. "The Tardis. What's wrong with her!?" His voice was full of panic that was thinly veiling an ocean of despair. Rose's eyes widened at just how distraught he sounded. Oh, Doctor.

She made her own way over to the console and touched it, trying to determine what had caused the Doctor to get so upset. It registered immediately when she felt a pang of panic as well. The Tardis always hummed, glowed, brushed her mind when she stroked the console. It was a little like grabbing a human's hand. But there was nothing, just that same pinprick of consciousness.

"Oh, Doctor, no, don't worry. She said she had to fix her connection with the time vortex and would be away for a while but she's fine. Look, she made me this bed and we've been talking lots. She's been keeping me company! She's completely fine, made it through the end of the Time War better than you did I think." The words flew out of her mouth in a babble to try and reassure him.

He spun around to face her and she unconsciously moved toward him, trying to convince him that she was telling the truth. "How can you possibly know …" He was cut off in the middle of the question because at that moment she touched him.

It was just her hand on his, a caress against his knuckles whitened from clutching so hard to the console. But oh god, did it feel like more than that.

Rose was rocked backwards by the force of his despair. He was empty inside, utterly aching and broken. Something had been torn from him and he was screaming internally, heart and soul and mind sobbing for contact, for relief from a grief beyond words. Rose's entire existence ceased to matter in the face of such abject misery.

"Doctor," she whispered, horrified. He had seemed so normal. How could he possibly?

Her legs would have crumpled except that at the moment she'd taken his hand, he had swung towards her, pierced her with his gaze for an instant and then crushed her to him, moving so she was between him and the console. It seemed involuntary and he did it with a sob ripped from that abyss deep within him.

"Doctor," she murmured again, and clutched him towards her right back. Curves pressed flat against the planes of his body with the force of their embrace. The console cut into the beginning of her thighs as he lifted her a little, pressing as much of their bodies together as possible. She could feel his hearts beating against her chest.

And she reached out a mental wave just as she'd been practicing with the Tardis, just as she had with her own Doctor as she was falling. A golden caress against the black of his mind.

It would be the understatement of many millennia to say that the Doctor was having a bad day, but there it was. He woke up broken, searched out some clothes that fit and said soldier, on autopilot as he was lost in the emptiness mind.

He hadn't considered many of the particulars of losing Gallifrey. In this immediate aftermath, it was the odd practicalities he hadn't thought about that he seemed to be fixating on. He'd never realized just how he felt other Time Lords in his mind. Hadn't occurred to him at all that that losing the constant, white noise murmur of them would be searingly painful.

He was unsteady as he began the walk from medbay to console room, but that was to be expected. New legs and all. And this regeneration had been a difficult one, that was certain.

When he reached the console room, he realized two things very quickly. First, that it was radically different than it had ever been before. Second, that there was someone in his Tardis.

This girl from his future was fascinating, wonderfully distracting from all the devastation which he was dwelling on with most of his mind and all of it whenever given half a chance. She looked at him with adoration in her eyes and she spoke of a future him like this wasn't the end. She was difficult to believe in.

And those conclusions were all reached before she sent that most flawless of intimate caresses to comfort the abyss of his mind.

He hadn't fully realized just how broken he was until she was there. She felt divine, filling him in places which were excruciatingly empty. He wanted more of her, desperately

And it wasn't just the pleasure of the feeling. He could tell that she had done this before, with him. The flavor of her mind, that golden touch which set him on fire in every way, was stamped with his name all over her essence. He might compare it to her smelling of him, except it went deeper and meant much more.

_I have nothing. I need something. And you are already mine. I need you._ He hadn't realized that he was even capable of such primitive thought, but with one gentle touch, she wiped him of everything.

He opened his eyes, course of action decided without any conscious input. He was already pressing her against the console, pressing her against his body. His hands itched to rub up and down her, exploring the curves he could feel against himself. He salivated with the need to taste and lick and then suck and bite. _Human, she's human. Other humans won't recognize the mental imprint_.

He wasn't sure whether to be impressed by the coherence of the thought, or acknowledge that it was only so coherent because it reflected his urgent desire to mark her as his in every way. And since humans wouldn't be able to sense him on her yet –

He bent his mouth to her neck and sucked skin into his lips, pressing down with his teeth hard enough to indent. He pulled on her hard, breaking capillaries and forcing blood to rise to the surface, brushing the skin firmly with his tongue as he did so.

She tasted sinful. Salt and sweat and musk and her. But she tasted not at all of him. His thoughts were wild and he managed to force words out to get answers for them. "Your mind." He ground out, pulling his mouth away from her neck for the words. She looked up at him, blinking slowly as if lost. He wasn't sure if this was due to still being lost in his mind, or simple lust.

"Your mind says that you are mine. But your body does not. Why?" His sentences were clipped, terse and fought through the urge to return to her skin. Who cared why she didn't taste of him, why he wasn't in her body? _Just make it so!_

The urge was becoming closer and closer to overpowering.

"My mind says, what?" She asked, sounding dazed. "We've never, that is …" She trailed off because he was unable to fight his urges anymore and his mouth had returned to the join of her neck and shoulder to work more on that mark he was so desperately forming. She marveled at how he had managed to find the most sensitive spot on her neck without even trying.

He pulled away again and his eyes were darker than she had ever seen. Before responding to her at all, he examined the mark he'd made critically. "Not dark enough. But give it half an hour." She wasn't sure if he was addressing her, but decided to ignore it as he answered her previous questions.

"Your essence, your mental touch is marked by me. It says that you are mine. But your body does not bear the same message. I need – I want to …" There was a pause of pure vulnerability, as if he were waiting for her to deny him.

It was laughable. She would never deny him anything.

"Yes, of course, whatever you need." And if what he needed involved more kissing, that was more than alright.

She accompanied the words with another stroke out towards his consciousness with her mind. And this time, he moaned at the connection and grabbed her mentally to haul her mind towards his, just as he leaned down to press his lips to her neck again.

She was in his mind. Fully in, golden glow lighting up the many, many dark places. He groaned with the pleasure and intimacy of it, and then pressed himself into her mind to match. _Yes. Mine. _He ground the words out mentally, struggling to stay coherent even in his thoughts.

Rose let out a little gasp. "Was that your thoughts? Like the Tardis? But I can't …" She trailed off because his mouth was trailing burning kisses up and down her neck: presses and nips and licks.

_Rose Tyler_. Her name rolled off of his mental voice just as it always had off his physical one and the sensation was too incredible for it to occur to her that they hadn't been introduced. _Tell me that you are mine._

The thoughts seemed to reverberate around her body, melting her and setting her on fire all at once. She felt a rather embarrassing rush of wetness between her legs and her entire body arched up towards him. "God, Doctor, I'm yours." Her voice stumbled, struggling with coherency against the total onslaught of him.

_No. Tell me with your mind._ Rose frowned in confusion and then tried it.

Her mental voice pressed up against him like her body was and she sent up the thoughts, trying to infuse them with as much power and truth as she could. _I'm yours._

Even he couldn't have known how he would react to such a powerful burst of fact flaming through his mind. Especially since her mental voice covered with traces of him to prove just how honest she was being. _Mine. And I will never let you go._

There was a terrifying simplicity to these words if she thought about them too hard. Luckily, she was rather distracted because when he voiced them in his head, he also brought his lips up from her neck to meet hers.

The kiss was not exactly what she'd imagined in daydreams. This was the stuff of dark fantasy from the middle of the night. When it was dark enough in the Tardis that she could hide away from herself just how deeply, desperately, and thoroughly she _wanted_ the Doctor. Of course, she was in love with him. But she was also and had always been deeply in lust.

This kiss was full of lust. Which was funny, since they were simultaneously engaged in the most intimately emotional act she had ever known. Her superior Time Lord seemed reduced to little more than animal passion and need and he was dragging her down with him.

They were open mouthed from the moments lips connected, his tongue forging forward and conquering her mouth, sweeping over teeth and flicking at gums. She wrestled him back, lips slipping against his. She pressed into his mouth, forward and up against him and he retaliated by sucking at her tongue in a motion that seemed directly connected to every other erogenous zone in her body.

She made a sound like a whimper and he took advantage of her distraction to pull her lower lip between his and suck on it gently, laving it with tongue for a moment before biting down just a bit too hard to be teasing.

And as horribly distracting as all of this was, it wasn't enough to take her away from the awareness of him in her mind. She was losing track of whether she was in his mind or he was in hers – they were existing together somehow. She caught swirls of thought and pleasure from him, but his mind was so chaotic that little was coherent. Or maybe that was just her own inability to focus on it.

While reflecting on this, his mouth had moved back to her neck again, brushing and biting his way down. She recoiled a little when he pressed his mouth on the rising bruise he'd bitten there earlier, but he responded only with a growl and pulled her closer.

He sucked on the mark again, but let go after only a moment. The pain of it ripped Rose back to remembering the Tardis's cautions about the Doctor's violent state of mind. But this was so good! And he had asked first.

She retaliated by digging her nails into his back. Which led her to the realization that her hands had crept up the back of her jumper without his awareness. _When did that happen?_ She wondered to herself in a daze.

The Doctor chuckled darkly, making her wonder if he was able to pay more attention to her thoughts than she could to his.

Her response was in her mind. _Do you really care right now?_ He almost taunted. And slid his own hands under her vest, bringing her top with him. _Off._

That was a command. Too bad she was far too far gone to call him on it. Not that she even knew if she would have. The tone had made her shiver darkly.

While she was pondering this newly discovered side of her sexuality, he had unsnapped her bra. The sound of it pushed her into action, shoving his jacket off of his shoulders. The solid sound of it hitting the console floor sent a shiver up her spine. _I've been dreaming of that noise for a long time._

_Oh, Rose Tyler. You will not have to dream again. I'm never letting go of you._ This sent another shot of foreboding through her. But her troubled thoughts of their future were brushed aside very quickly as he slid her bra free and his hands found her breasts. The sound she made was completely involuntary.

_Mmmm, I love that noise. You'll make it again._ He demanded in her head. God, she really should have been offended by how pushy he was being. But she'd past a point of arousal beyond which his forcefulness was just ridiculously attractive.

The beauty of this mental connection was that he could talk dirty to her while his mouth did obscenely dirty things to hers. She fought through the feel of her nipples between his fingers to push his jumper off of his muscled frame.

He got grumpy and growled at having to remove his hands from her breasts for her to pull off his jumper, but when it was lying on the floor and she had crushed their naked chests together, he lost his complaints.

His telepathy alone was turning her into a pile of goo. So she tried to return the favor a little by pressing towards him the feeling of his hearts beating against her chest, sparse chest hair brushing roughly by her nipples, melting into the solidity of his frame. It was a heady mix of insane lust and intense … love.

Upon receiving the emotions, the Doctor made a broken kind of keening sound. He shoved her back against the console and leaned away from her for a moment. She blinked up at him, uncomprehending the loss of him mouth and body.

She shivered reflexively when she looked at him. His eyes were completely dark, full of a look of such extreme lust that she knew her panties would have been soaked through in an instant if they hadn't been already.

"Off." The word was ground out through clenched jaw. She noticed, through a haze of lust as she obediently unfastened her jeans, that he had pulled back from their telepathic connection just as he had their physical one.

He had pulled off trousers and pants while she removed her jeans. She was toying self-consciously with the band of her knickers when he finished and she was distracted by the vision before her. She'd never thought she would get to see this sight, in any of her Doctors incarnations. And fuck, it was glorious.

His cock jutted towards her, thicker and longer than she'd been expecting. The flash of worry that he'd be too much for her was lost as she glanced at his eyes again. He was fixated on her fingers still brushing the lace at the edge of her waistband.

She lost track of coherent thought and just registered motions. He shoved her hand aside and replaced it with his, which ripped the last of her coverings down her leg. She wasn't sure if he actually got them off or tore them out of the way. There was a sound of ripping cloth, but she was far too preoccupied with the way his mouth had found hers again, the way his fingers were pressing between her legs, finding her embarrassingly soaked.

He pressed one finger inside of her, although it slipped in with little resistance given just how wet she was. _Fuck. ROSE._

These thoughts made her dimly recollect that he was still pulling away from their telepathic link. She didn't have anywhere close to the focus to try to reinstate it herself and anyway, before she could miss it too much he was leaning her back over the console, dipping his head to catch a nipple roughly between his teeth, then moving back up to her neck to that spot.

And simultaneously he bit down on her neck, thrust inside of her, and locked their minds together.

Rose exploded into an instant orgasm. She'd been on the edge since their lips had met and this was purest sensory overload. She was everywhere and nowhere, shaking, glowing with pleasure.

She came back to herself before he began to thrust. He was holding her in place with whitened fingertips, pressed as far into her as he could be and practically trembling with the effort of holding still. And his eyes had gotten blacker.

She registered that their minds were thoroughly linked. He was flooding her with a litany of _fucking sinful beautiful never deserved flawless perfect gorgeous mine mine mine._ The possessive tone and the echoes of just how much pleasure he was experiencing at that moment sent her arousal skyrocketing again.

_That's new …_ she mused in some nonexistent corner of her mind which was still semi-coherent. And then coherency became a meaningless word as the Doctor drew back a little and thrust back inside of her roughly.

She'd never felt so full in every way. Not just her body, which seemed to be stretched and filled to the very limits, but also her mind. _And heart and soul_, something whispered deep within her. Stunningly, she could feel an echo of this feeling within him. And as she paid attention, recognized with what should have been foreboding, but was really just arousal, his reaction. _Mine mine mine mine. Never letting go of this. Never. Mine._

He was doing something, she realized vaguely. Pulling at her mind, pressing her further into himself and pushing himself more deeply into her. Like he was adjusting their curves to each other, pressing into the nooks and crannies of her mind, twining them together in ways that she couldn't imagine ever coming undone.

The thought should have scared her, but instead she arched her back in desperation, pleasure ratcheting up even further. _Please, DOCTOR._ She didn't even know what she was begging for, but he seemed to.

_Yes, my Rose. We will._ She didn't know what it was they were going to do, but god she needed him in every way. She'd thought this had been a possession before, but it wasn't enough. She couldn't imagine anything would ever be enough, he would never ever be hers as much as she needed him to be and vice versa.

_My Doctor, please._ She whimpered to him and he responded by lapping at the bite on her neck, moving up to kiss her soul deep, then back down to the mark.

His thrusts had increased in pace and she was struggling to keep up, stay away from utterly mindless pleasure, but it felt so flawless, like she was burning in pure sensation. Her head lolled back for a moment, but his mental voice was sharp. _Rose, look at me. _

Her head shot back up to meet his eyes. And all at once he slammed up inside of her one last time, hitting her clit at the exact perfect angle as he stretched her body with his possession and she was transfixed by the adoration in his eyes which filled up the utter loneliness of before.

She collapsed into pleasure even more intense than the time before. And she was acting without thought. She pressed her mind into his with more force than she had used before and her presence seemed to slide right around his mind's nooks and crannies and into him. And her glowing gold mind was imprinting itself on him, filling up the emptiness and imprinting everywhere the words _ROSE TYLER_.

She lost track of things for a while after that, exploding herself into a sea of golden light where she was aware of no specifics beyond her own utter pleasure. The instant she became slightly more aware, the Doctor growled her name into her ears and pounded into her three more times, before she could feel his orgasm in her head as he repeated what she had done in his mind to her.

It was just as stunning a feeling from the receiving end. He filled her completely, possessed everything that she was. And she gave it joyously. She had a passing awareness of a golden name echoing through her mind and imprinting itself as a flawless image of interlocking circles which looked like the inner workings of a clock.

It was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. And beautiful had taken on a whole new meaning in the past hour, which she was fully aware of as she stared up into his still dark eyes.

He moved her wordlessly over to her bed and they collapsed to the covers together. Both were unconscious almost before they hit the blankets.


	5. Chapter 4

**A/N:** Here we go! The Doctor wakes up and the TARDIS finds out what her darlings have been up to while she was away! A couple notes first though.  
Number One: a million thanks for the reviews from the last chapter! It was, in fact, my first time actually posting smut on the internet and I was more than slightly terrified you would all think it was awful!  
Number Two: this story is going to stay pretty darn adult from here on out. These two just can't seem to keep their hands off each other. ;-) So note the rating please. Oh and ...  
Number Three: my emotional reaction of terror that a review will be disgust for this story and then pure joy when it is not is rather overwhelming. Please send me more! ;-)

**As It Must Be**

**Chapter 4**

The first thing he was aware of was the name Rose Tyler. And the realization that he may never wake, sleep, or live without that name in the front of his mind.

The second thing was utter horror. What the fuck had he done?! It was like waking up in the medbay after the Time War all over again. Speaking of which …

He muddled around in his own head for a bit, then collapsed back against the pillows of the bed, not sure whether shock, horror, or utter joy was dominant.

Where there had been gaping holes when he first awakened, now his mind was full again. And full in a more glorious way than he had ever hoped to imagine. His thoughts were all laced with the essence of Rose Tyler's mind. Her consciousness pulsed steadily in sleep in the heart of his own mind, overflowing even the area where all other Time Lord minds had once whispered to him.

_Oh Rose, what did we … what did I do?_ The thought was distraught and incredibly regretful, but it couldn't entirely quell the rush of joy he felt when he looked down and became physically aware of his surroundings for the first time.

He was cradling Rose in his arms, curled around her completely, pressing every inch of himself into her with his arms wrapped around her torso and legs twined between hers.

And a rock hard cock pressing into her obscenely attractive bum.

He grimaced. Definitely the wrong time and the wrong reaction, but there was nothing he could do about it.

As he had just begun pondering what his next move should be – rather boggled by the utter mess he'd managed to get himself into – he was interrupted by a furious shriek in his mind.

He let out a sigh of relief he hadn't realized he was holding as he felt the Tardis rush back into his mind. He hadn't realized how worried he'd been about her, despite what Rose had said about what she was doing. She, however, did not seem quite as happy to see him out and about.

_What did you do?! Have you hurt her? You cannot hurt my Wolf!_ The Doctor tried to process her anger logically, but felt like he was missing vital pieces of information. First, the Tardis rarely spoke to him in such explicit form. Second, she seemed enraged about Rose? But why? Speaking of which, he still knew next to nothing about Rose. Which was all the more terrifying now that she was permanently seared into his mind and soul.

_I didn't hurt her!_ He protested mentally. Then he shot a guilty look towards the neck of the girl he was still cradling. He blanched at the sight of the dark bruise on the side of her neck. And squashed the primitive part of himself which crowed with possession.

The Tardis was silent for a long moment and then sighed. _Even though this must happen, even though I am glad that she finally slipped through your guard, I am still furious with you my Thief. She doesn't know what you have done._

He ought to be more guilty about that than he was. But if he had sat this strange girl down and told her what this mental link was going to do, she might have refused. And nothing in him could regret their bond.

The Tardis sent him a flash of red anger at his remorseless thoughts. He responded by very deliberately leaning down to Rose and brushing his lips over the bruise at her neck. There was a long moment of mental stand-off as ship and Time Lord stared one another down.

The Tardis broke first, with a sigh. _Like I said, though furious with your method, I am very glad that you've tied my Wolf to me permanently. It has always occurred._

The Doctor focused in on the earlier part, ignoring the complicated tense of the last statement. _Your Wolf. What does that mean? Who is she?_

_You've claimed her as your mate for all of Time and you don't even know who she is._ There was clear scorn in her voice. _Ah, my Wolf deserves better than you Time Lord._

He found himself on the verge of a growl at the suggestion that he and Rose should not be together. Too terrible to think on. _Who is she?_

The answer he got was a swirl of adoration and golden music like the song of the Tardis itself and the words Bad Wolf and, oddly, the taste of chips. He grimaced at his ship. _More coherently, please._

_You've met her before and you'll meet her again. But neither of you are in your correct timeline right now._ The tone was stern, but the words were ambiguous. He took a moment to sort it all out.

_But I haven't met her yet. So she has met me. Which means that to maintain the timelines, I cannot keep her._ His mental voice was a thin façade over the panic and rage he felt over that statement. The Tardis saw right through him though.

_You will maintain this timeline, my Thief. You must. You have._ Her tone had softened greatly, as though aware of just how horrible this statement was to him. She probably was, he had never been able to maintain boundaries with her.

_You will also take care of her when she awakens. She is mine too. _

He pulled a face and tightened his arms around the little human he was holding. He was torn between offense that his ship even thought this needed to be said and out of place jealousy at anyone else having a claim on his Rose.

The tighter squeeze of his arms caused Rose to murmur quietly and blink her eyes open. She turned towards him in confusion, an emotion he knew because it was pulsing over their bond, not because it was in her face. He grinned foolishly at the feeling, at her presence in a place which had been so utterly empty.

She smiled foolishly up at him, a dazzlingly simple joy in her eyes. "Hello." She said, and then reached up towards his face and took his lips with her own.

Her happiness and innocent offering of her body surged through his own, surging through his erection which had not died down since he'd awoken. He consciously fought to keep the kiss sweet and soft, but failed when her tongue flicked past his lips to engage him in something deeper, wetter, and far from innocent.

The Tardis pulsed through – both of them? – in irritation and they broke apart. The Doctor admired her panting and flushed face with smugness until he realized he was a little short of breath himself.

Then he was distracted. "Can you talk to my Tardis?"

Rose blinked at the apparent non-sequitur when she was still trying to recover from the flames of lust he'd stoked to life. "Yes." She said after a long moment and clearing her throat. "But she can talk to anyone she'd like to, can't you beauty?"

She reached down and trailed her fingers in a stroke along the grated floor of the Tardis. The Doctor tried to remain focused on the issues at hand and not on the things this stretch did to her breasts, which were barely remaining covered by the blankets.

He forced his gaze up to her face and sternly told himself to keep it there until he had some answers. Unfortunately, she wasn't paying much attention to him, fixating on petting his ship. "No, don't worry, I'm fine." She said, quietly and to the console.

"Are you talking to her right now? Why are you talking to her and not me?" He told himself that he did not sound petulant. He also realized that he wasn't entirely sure about whether he was talking to Rose or the Tardis.

_She's mine too, Thief._ The Tardis's voice sounded rather smug in his head.

The Doctor shoved down his anger in favor of getting some questions finally answered. "Rose Tyler." He said, commanding her focus back to him. "Who are you?"

She turned towards him suddenly and he became abruptly aware again that she was naked in bed with him. A very small bed. And she was his. He shoved these thoughts as far away as possible and tried to focus. The smirk she gave him said that he hadn't succeeded particularly well in keeping the emotions away from the bond.

But then she focused as well. "Um, I'm not sure how much I can tell you." Her face was guarded and he could feel her pulling away from him mentally. He fought back a rising feeling of panic at the sensation and grabbed onto her hand, which had been brushing his fingertips under the blankets.

Both of them closed their eyes for a moment at the physical connection. Rose especially seemed stunned. Fingers laced together and palms met in a warm embrace. The Doctor released a measure of tension he hadn't realized he'd had.

"I'm sorry." He said, almost without thinking. "For last night. I wasn't thinking straight. And I hurt you." He actually flushed as his gaze dropped to her neck.

Rose self-consciously reached up to touch the spot with the hand which wasn't holding his.

"No, it's … more than okay." She met his eyes with an awkward half-grin. "I wasn't complaining."

He was shocked to realize that he was actually smiling back. It'd been a week since the end of the Time War and he was smiling already?! This human girl was boggling. Speaking of which.

"And as far as timelines go, Time Lords deal with meeting in the wrong order and meeting themselves on a fairly regular basis. Tell me everything. I can remove the memories I shouldn't have. Or the Tardis can." He spoke with a deceptive calm to cover up the pure panic and denial which coursed through him at the thought of forgetting her. "So who are you?"

Rose gave him a suspicious look, clearly not believing his earlier statements. Then her face relaxed. "Oh, the Tardis says you're telling the truth." She smiled. "And she says she'll take away the memories if necessary. She says the timelines must be maintained."

She looked up at him speculatively and then shrugged. "Well, I suppose then … my name is Rose Tyler."

The Doctor rolled his eyes at her. "Yes, I know, Rose Tyler. That name is only burned all over my soul."

Rose turned a deep red and he felt a prodding along the bond, rather like she was mentally poking him. He grinned and poked her right back. "Hello." He said simultaneously, and wiggled the fingers of the hand not laced with hers at her.

"What, um, what is that?" She asked, hesitantly.

The Doctor waved the question away. "You first." He said firmly.

She sighed and closed her eyes for a moment before beginning to answer. "I met you when I was 19 in the basement of a Henrik's department store where I was working. You told me to run." She opened her eyes and looked piercingly up at him. "And we've been running ever since."

He frowned. "And did I seem to know you already when we met for your first time?"

She shook her head slowly, realizing the ramifications. "No, definitely not." She was shocked to find that she could feel the wave of panic which gripped him in that new place in her mind which she was beginning to realize was him. What on earth had happened last night?

"Keep going with your story."

"Right, well, there isn't too much to tell. We got into all sorts of trouble, usually the result of your bad driving, and eventually ended up battling the Cybermen in the 21st century. That's where I'm from. 21st century Earth. We were going to pull them all into the void because they'd come through it already from a parallel universe, but we'd been through the void too. And you tried to send me back to the parallel universe, but I wouldn't go. I can't believe you'd even try." She shot him an accusatory glare, and then shrugged.

"Well, I suppose that wasn't you exactly. It's your next regeneration." The Doctor's eyes had gone wide at the whole story. Parallel universes? Rose staying through a regeneration? (Did she like his next form as much as this one? Did she even like this one?) Cybermen?

"Not much to tell? Sounds like there's a lot you aren't telling me." Rose had the grace to flush a little.

"Better to have to forget as little as possible, right? And besides, you don't need me to tell you, you're going to live it." She grinned at him. "It's pretty fantastic." Her grin widened and her tongue snuck between her teeth.

The tease. His eyes were locked on her mouth now, a mouth still swollen from their brutal kisses the previous night. He made a sorry attempt to focus on their conversation again when she cleared her throat. "So, how did you get here then?" He asked, pulling his gaze back up to her eyes, ignoring her knowing look.

"When we opened the void, it was pulling everything in, us included. And we were supposed to be holding on to these magna-somethings. But I slipped." Her face fell and he felt an echo of the panic his future self must have felt. "Luckily my dad from the parallel universe came back to get me and brought me back to that universe before I fell through the void."

She looked up at him earnestly. "But before that, I felt something while I was falling. A sort of mental connection like this." She poked at the bond again. "And I could hear you in my head. And then when the parallel universe shut itself off it hurt beyond belief. I passed out I think. And I came to in front of your Tardis. So dunno what happened in between."

"Well, neither do I," The Doctor admitted, "but I might know more about when you were cut off in the parallel universe."

He looked a little flustered, as though unsure where to begin. "You may have noticed that we're um … connected now." He pressed a mental fingertip against where she was still pulsing gold in his mind.

She nodded and smiled. "It's nice. Well, that's an understatement." She looked up at him through her lashes and smiled with her tongue and the effect jumped straight to jerk through his cock. He stifled a groan.

Her eyes widened. "I could, um, feel that." She said, blushing. There was a moment in which he wildly checked to make sure he hadn't thrust against her before he realized that she meant she'd felt it along the bond. And at the same moment, he realized he could smell her, a musky and impossibly arousing scent.

"Uh, yes." His voice was shaky, but he cleared his throat to strengthen it. "Gallifreyans are telepathic, you know. And they formed these bonds in their marriage ceremonies. They connect the couple mentally and allow them to feel emotions, send thoughts to one another more easily, that kind of thing."

He frowned. "Time Lords didn't really know too much about them. We didn't bond in that way and they were private, not really something you talked about. But the lore of them was passed down like legends." A spasm of grief flew through him. "Well, it used to be." The words were muttered, but the pain in them was enough to physically rock Rose toward him.

She clutched his hand tighter and used it to pull herself towards him, not seeming to notice their mutual nudity as she wrapped herself around his body and rested her head on his chest. Simultaneously, she reached along the bond, her presence bursting in his mind and pushing back his demons.

He lay back in shock and awe at this miracle human. "You shouldn't be able to do that!" He burst out. "Gallifreyans were telepathic. It requires telepathy far beyond what a human mind can withstand!"

She shrugged in his arms. "Apparently not." She turned her face to smile up at him. "So, we're sort of married then."

He felt the glow of joy along their bond and in her presence in his mind and couldn't help but respond with his own burst of happiness. "It shouldn't happen. I mean, on several levels, it shouldn't happen. You're human and I'm a Time Lord."

His grumpiness about the bond was not enough to make her happiness about it fade. "So why didn't Time Lords do this then? I thought you were Gallifreyans."

He grimaced at the past tense, but Rose's shimmering presence was far too bright in his head to let him slip into despair again. "It … was. But there were Gallifreyans and then there Time Lords, we're sort of a more evolved form. And we had to go to the Academy. I'm oversimplifying. But regardless. Time Lords don't bond like this."

There was a long pause as though Rose was considering her words. He sensed hesitancy in her in his head and smiled indulgently. "Just ask."

"You mentioned once that you had children though." The words came out in a rush, as though she knew just how painful the reminder would be. Then he remembered that she was in his mind and thought that she just might know how much it hurt.

Indeed, he tightened around her spasmodically at the thought of Susan. Of the looms, of time tots, of his family, however loosely defined. Gone, all gone and all because of him.

This time, Rose's glow was not enough to battle the sheer loss. "Oh Rose," he gasped into her hair with a shattered sob.

He realized that he was shaking, that Rose was stroking his hair, his temples, his sides. She was shoving feelings towards him: love, admiration, commitment. But he was beyond sensing much beyond the fact that she was intensely present in his mind. He clutched her closer. And reality faded.

He wasn't sure how long it was later that he came back to awareness. That was alarming in itself, since it meant his time sense had been impaired. He was still curled around Rose and she was still muttering soothing words into his chest, while pulsing in his mind with love. But now he realized that the love she was pushing forward was burying a deeper layer of fear, panic.

He lazily pushed into her mind, almost absently. _Mine._ He whispered to her mentally. _Never letting you go. Don't be afraid My Rose._

She drew in a sharp breath and looked up at him. There were tear tracks on her cheeks. "Oh Doctor, it's been hours!" She cried. "I was so terrified, the Tardis told me it would be okay. But I could barely feel you in my head.

New tears were beginning to fall down her cheeks. He reached out and stroked at the panic she was feeling, trying to soothe her.

"I'm alright," he offered calmly. "I'm not sure what happened – I think I turned myself off in protection. But here you are. I don't need that because I have you. Shh, I'm alright."

She reached up to his face with both hands and pulled him toward her desperately. He came more than willingly, erection shooting back to life with her desperate surge toward him. Their lips met with a crash and he had about two moments of clarity to think about one day doing this slowly and gently before he was lost to the wet slide of her mouth against his.

Their tongues tangled, battled. He could tell she was a little angry with him for scaring her so much, so he let her dominate the kiss, pressing her tongue into his mouth and sweeping along his teeth as though claiming her territory. _I'm conquered love. Yours. _He murmured to her in thoughts over the bond.

His activation of their bond seemed to remind her that it existed. She shot forward to fill his mind as much as possible and he cried out at the sensation, hips bucking to fill her physically as well and swelling to a painful level.

He had a moment to think that he probably should have explained more about the bond before they activated it again. Then he remembered that was what he'd been doing when he'd gone out. His pang of grief at the thought was smothered by Rose's all-encompassing presence.

"Rose," He ground out. She pouted that he was doing something with his mouth other than kissing her back, and ducked her head to his neck instead. "Rose, listen to me. You can't just push into the bond like that, it makes me …"

At that moment, she moved so that she was pressing the soaked, hot place between her thighs against his aching cock. He lost all logical thought and rocked into her with a very loud groan. She bit down on his neck and slid a hand down to his bum, pressing him towards her. Her mind pled with his, urging him forward.

He was entirely unequal to this girl begging for him, which was what was essentially occurring. He rolled her beneath him instinctually, falling into the cradle of her hips and moaning at the feel of her slit pressed along his length, all slick and hot. He wrapped his hands behind her thighs, moved up to kiss her and thrust into her heat.

_Home._ He wasn't sure which of them thought it, with their minds as tied together as they were, both swirling with arousal and pleasure. He pulled out only an inch, then thrust back in, making Rose let out that whimpering noise that he loved.

One hand moved up to her breast. He lifted and plumped it, then rubbed over the nipple firmly with his thumb. _You don't give me enough time to appreciate you properly._ He chided her. Being inside her had restored a little bit of sanity to his desperation.

She just moaned and twisted under him, moving her hips in a sliding twist which made him make a noise he would not have admitted had come from his mouth. The pace of his thrusts sped up, losing the traces of control he had had. Rassilon, she felt so good around him, hot and clutching. He buried himself in her over and over, claiming her for himself again.

He heard someone chanting _mine_ in their joint consciousness and realized that it was Rose with a gasp and hard thrust which went even deeper into her than he had been already. Her name was the extent of language he could recall, her possessiveness making him utterly mindless.

_Rose, you need to come for me. I need to feel you clutching, squeezing, tightening around me. I need you to pull me inside of you, to lose yourself in passion._ He accompanied the thoughts with his hand, shifting down to press at her clit, and trying not to be distracted by the painfully erotic feeling of himself against his fingertips, sliding into her and out again.

She was making desperate, gasping noises which were driving him closer and closer to the edge, a tingle settling in the base of his spine and balls drawing up tightly. He could feel her in his mind, just as close to the edge.

He pressed down hard on her clit, drove into her again, and pressed forward into her mind. _Come for me Rose._

She let out an inarticulate scream and soared over the edge of her climax. She clenched down on his cock hard and her orgasm exploded into his mind. He gasped her name and felt himself jerk deep inside of her, orgasm hard, fast, and rocking him to his soul.

He collapsed, trying to keep as much of his weight off of her as possible and probably failing. They lay together, breathing heavily and drawing back into their own minds, their own bodies.

It was several minutes later before he mustered the strength to mutter, "Rose" and draw out of her. She uttered a mew of protest and blinked her eyes open, smiling at him brilliantly.

He realized he was grinning back and almost shook his head. This girl. She was impossible. "One of these days," he said, sternly, "we're going to do that slow. And I'm actually going to get to taste every inch of you. And touch you everywhere. And make you beg. Even if I have to tie you down to make it happen."

She flushed dark red and her eyes went heavy-lidded. "S'that a promise?" She asked, in a tone of voice that ought to be illegal, and probably was on at least a dozen planets.

"It is." He replied, darkly. "But now, you are going to go take a shower and put on some clothes. And I will do the same. And then we're going to talk about this bond before anything else happens."

He thought she was going to argue, but then seemed to think better of it. "I suppose I could use a shower. Sure you don't want to save water and shower together?"

He glared at her, but they both knew it was utterly empty. "We are not going to do that again until we talk about it."

Rose looked at him from under her lashes, then arched lazily against his body. He let out an involuntary moan. "Bet I could make you change your mind about that." Both of them knew very well who would win that bet. "But I won't. You're right, we should talk."

And with that, she got up from the bed, picked up the clothes more obviously located around the console room, and sashayed off to a door he hadn't noticed before. Naked.

He groaned and flopped back onto the bed, sparing a glare for the bulge in the sheets that had grown due to her naked figure in his console room. She was going to spontaneously regenerate him.

_You'd never have it any other way._ The Tardis's mental voice was smug and joyful. The Doctor grimaced over at the console.

"You best have turned a blind eye just then, Rose wouldn't like it if she knew you were watching her." The lights in the room flickered in a chuckle, but there was no other response than a door opening twenty feet or so away from the one Rose had gone through.

He sent his ship a rush of gratitude and walked through the door, happy to clean up some before they tried this conversation again.


	6. Chapter 5

**A/N:** Another chapter! The big question is answered ... can Rose and the Doctor actually get through an entire conversation without jumping each other? ;-) Thanks again for the positive response! Remember, more encouragement = quicker editing and posting! :-D

**As It Must Be**

**Chapter 5**

Rose walked into the console room again with damp hair, and wearing shorts and a t-shirt, both of which had been had been picked out by the TARDIS and were hanging outside of the shower when she got out. They were accompanied by a bra and panty set with a excessive amount of lace.

She couldn't talk to the TARDIS about that. She'd just flushed a deep red and pulled them on while the ship chuckled happily at her in her head.

The entire shower had been spent in a haze of happiness over the golden fullness she was feeling. It was like being constantly bathed in the warmth of love, like hugging the Doctor all the time.

Although it made her ridiculously happy, she did know she still needed to get answers about what exactly this connection was. Because the things she was guessing about the nature of it were rather alarming. Especially given that she needed to leave this version of the Doctor. What would happen then? What would happen when he had to forget her and who she was?

She felt a shiver of fear at the thought of leaving him on his own. It was answered promptly by a swell of warmth and protection from what she thought of as him in that glowing section of her mind.

Unfortunately this reassurance from him rather counteracted its purpose. They were so very deeply entangled in ways that she didn't understand at all. And she couldn't imagine detangling herself. It sounded like a painful process at best.

She walked back out to the console room, determined to get some answers about this connection and what exactly they were going to do about it without upsetting both their personal time lines. Although, no reapers had shown up yet, so they had to be at least okay, right?

She found the Doctor already in the console room, cooing over the controls and sliding his hands over the grating. She lounged back a moment in the door admiring the little smile on his face, the way his fingers were caressing the TARDIS with infinite gentleness, the happiness pulsing down the bond, which felt stronger now that they were in the same room.

He turned towards her after only a moment though and beamed at her, almost involuntarily. She found herself smiling back with no conscious thought to do so. It was so good to see this version of him again.

She stepped forward and asked, "TARDIS all okay? She seemed to be doing well, but there were some things she was saving to fix until you were ready to help. They aren't too urgent, are they?"

He grinned at her, petting the console again. "Nah, she's perfect, aren't you old girl. Clever, she is, fixing herself up all pretty for us."

Rose laughed at his near baby voice used for the TARDIS. "If I didn't know better, you'd have me jealous the way you're stroking her." She was teasing, but he turned towards her with a serious look.

She had reached the console by this point and was standing beside him, trailing her fingers over some of the controls just like he was. He grabbed one of her hands and used it to turn her towards him, then slid his hand along the length of her side. It was a long, slow caress which blurred her thoughts and made her jaw go slack, burning through the fabric of her shirt and ending at the bottom of her shorts where his fingertips brushed the tops of her thighs.

It may have started out as a joke, this touch, but the way his gaze was burning into her and his fingers hadn't left her thigh made it very serious now. She found herself swaying towards him and pushed a shot of arousal down the bond almost without thought.

He gasped at the sensation and pulled his hand away. "Right. We're going somewhere public. Or we're never going to have this conversation."

She backed away from the console, mind still fuzzed with arousal. Yes, leaving this room where she'd been pressed between him and the console, getting that bed out of her direct line of sight – these were excellent ideas if she wanted to have an actual conversation with this man.

"Um, maybe chips?" she volunteered, "London, 21st century?"

"Chips it is!" he announced, cheerily, spinning around the console and slamming down levers.

The familiar shaking and grinding noises commenced and she gave him a huge grin as they were both tossed to the floor. He looked shocked though, so her grin faded a little. When they finally settled to a landing, both were lying on the ground, she pulling herself up by one of the struts. "Excellent job old girl!" She enthused, hugging the strut she was now standing by. "Beautifully done! Now, did he actually get us to where he claimed? That is the question …"

The Doctor was still lying on the ground and she frowned down at him. "You okay?"

"What was that landing?" he asked, sounding stunned.

Rose frowned, then it dawned on her. "Did she not used to do that?" she asked hesitantly.

"Of course not!" She wasn't sure if he was more stunned or angry or sad. She detected all three in his voice and in the emotions flowing down the bond. "She always does that now?"

"Yeah, but I love it." She caressed the strut again. "You're perfect old girl," she said, mirroring his earlier statement.

He still looked rather alarmed, but he did get to his feet and pressed a loving hand to the console. Then he turned toward her again and stuck out a hand, wiggling his fingers. "Shall we?"

She smiled hugely. She loved that hand. Their fingers laced just like they always had, always would and she looked up at him. "Let's."

He led them out of the TARDIS and pretended to be offended when she was surprised that he'd gotten to the right location. "I do that a lot then?" He asked, as they headed down the street to a chippie. "End up in the wrong place?"

She laughed, loving the sun, his hand in hers, that they were together. "The first time you brought me back home it was twelve months after the day we left. And you said it was only going to be twelve hours! My mum slapped you so hard ..." She dissolved into giggles at his disgruntled expression.

"Slapped by someone's Mum. Never thought I'd see the day," he muttered, then beamed involuntarily at the girl practically skipping at his side. The happiness she was radiating into his mind was hard to resist.

He opened the door to the shop for her and was embarrassed when he realized he had all of three pence in his pockets. She rolled her eyes and laughed at him again, she was making a habit of that, before buying them both chips. "I always pay!" She complained, and it was obviously an old argument for her. "You have all of time and space at your disposal and I always end up paying for chips."

They sat a table by the window and she dumped an impossible amount of vinegar on her potatoes before picking one up and biting in. She moaned and he started. That was a very familiar noise, but one he'd thought he could only induce her to make when significantly less clothes were involved.

She opened her eyes and leaned towards him. "So. Explain."

He pulled his thoughts out of the gutter and tried to focus. Better make this good.

"Like I said, Gallifreyans would bond to one another after a formal marriage ceremony, using telepathy to imprint their names on one another's psyche and forging a connection between two minds which was said to always be active. Normally our species needs physical contact to share thoughts and feelings, but this bond would allow it over distance and at a far more intense level."

Rose thought she saw him flush a little as he got the next part out. "And the name in their partner's mind was a sort of possession thing. It cemented their romantic commitment and um, well, I've heard it prevented either partner from straying. Permanently."

Their eyes met and locked. Rose flushed at the implications and bit her lip. "You say you've heard, you don't know?"

He shook his head. "Like I said, it hadn't been done even between Gallifreyans in a very long time. More legend than anything. We're all more modern than that now. You know, couples get together and don't necessarily want to commit to forever throughout all of time and space. And our forever is quite a bit longer than a human's."

She ignored the spasm of panic that this comment sent through both of them. There was plenty of time to worry about her human lifespan. Right now was for her to figure out what exactly was going on.

"And Time Lords never did?" she asked, keeping them focused.

He shook his head. "No. Even relationships were frowned upon. All about higher thought and reason, Time Lords were. Bonding would have interfered with your telepathy completely, besides being a primitive urge. Definitely not."

"It interferes with telepathy?" she asked.

He actually smiled a little. "It would if there were any other Time Lords to sense. Your presence in my mind is filling everything, every hole. I normally feel other Time Lords you know. Since there …" Rose filled in the words he couldn't say, '_are none left'_ in her head and nudged him to continue, sending a wave of support along the bond. "Yes, well, nothing to interfere with. And you fill those holes in my mind."

He looked down at his chips and flushed. "Suppose that's why I was so desperate to do it when I woke up. That and you reached out to me mentally and already had a touch of my essence in you."

"Yes, you said that," she said, reaching out to take his hand as she commented, forgiving him wordlessly for his earlier violence in creating the bond. "How can that be, do you think?"

He looked grim and didn't say anything for a long moment. She ate another few chips and just waited him out. Finally he opened his mouth reluctantly. "You say you reached out to me when you were falling. That connection might have started a basic bond, especially in someone who shouldn't be telepathic."

She could tell that there was more he wasn't telling her and wasn't sure if this certainty came from the bond or just knowing this man. "Or?" She asked.

He met her eyes again. "Or this might have already happened." He gestured between the two of them and looked grim. "I might make myself forget all of this and go on to meet the past version of you. And I'll still be bonded to you, but you won't be bonded to me. But being around me, well, who knows what that would do to your mind. Can't imagine there's ever been a situation like this before. A half-formed bond because it was made when the couple wasn't in sync with their timelines."

He grabbed a chip and popped it in his mouth, chewing slowly. "I've made a right mess of all this."

Rose was still frowning. "What would that do to you?" she asked. "Being bonded and not having me here. What would that mean for when you met me?"

"Dunno, I'm fairly sure it's never happened before." He weighed the question while examining another chip. "I suppose I'd be drawn to you, younger you that is. Probably want to reinstate the bond. But then, it wouldn't be this you, so I might not be able to. Who knows how these commitment limitations work?"

She picked up another chip and nibbled on it before asking, "So if I were to get back to future you, what will happen then? This bond, do you suppose it will just snap back into place?" A realization came over her, "Hold on, does it even last over regenerations?"

The Doctor looked offended. "Rose Tyler, regenerations are superficial personality quirks and appearance! I always maintain the core of me. And this bond … it's definitely at my core." His voice and eyes darkened at the end of his sentence and Rose found that both of them had leaned forward over the table, leaving as little room as possible between their faces.

His eyes flickered to her lips and she caught the motion, licking them slowly and tasting salt and vinegar. The Doctor's mouth opened slightly at the sight of her tongue and she thought he might have let out an almost inaudible moan.

Her arousal nudged its way over the bond without any direction from her and she watched his pupils dilate as it hit him. She received an answering wave of desire and fell back into her seat, pulling herself away from the magnetism in his gaze.

But the reminder of sex brought her up sharply against something she had completely forgotten to consider. "Hold on, we didn't use! That is …" She would have blushed, but she was panicking a little. He looked at her blankly.

"Protection." She finally pushed out, looking away and wondering how this could possibly embarrass her with everything else they'd already gotten up to.

"Ah," the Doctor's eyes lit up with amusement that she couldn't see since her eyes were fixed determinedly on the table top. "No need for it. We aren't genetically compatible. Time Lords have triple helix DNA you see, not double helix like you humans. We function similarly, but the basic genetic material is too different to combine."

She was surprised by a flash of grief and she wasn't entirely sure if it was from him, her, or both.

Another thing, like her lifespan, that she would wait to deal with later when she was with her version of him. "Well, good to know I guess." She smiled up at him with darkened eyes.

"So … maybe we could go back to the TARDIS, then?" She couldn't believe her own attraction to this man.

"That is a fantastic idea." His accent had deepened and darkened. "Are all your questions answered, Rose Tyler?"

Rose knew that they weren't, but she supposed he'd done the best he could. And besides, that mouth and those eyes were rather sinful at the moment. That expression was wasted on a chip shop in London. She nodded quickly and he stood up and offered her a hand to help her up.

The walk back to the TARDIS didn't include much talking. There was a lot of hands brushing hips and thighs as they swung between them and quite a few sideways looks that locked together and some fiery emotions flowing over the bond both ways.

Rose spared a moment to wonder at her ability to be so caught up by this man when there were so many other issues at hand. Then again, she couldn't count the number of times she'd been caught up staring at his bum or lips or hands or fantastic future hair when they were in a life threatening situation. And this situation was probably not life threatening.

He fumbled around in his pockets when they reached the TARDIS and she rolled her eyes and pushed him aside gently, pulling her key out of the neckline of her shirt. He always lost his key. Those bigger on the inside pockets meant he had a whole lot of things he didn't know about in there.

He tightened his grip on her hand and lowered his mouth to her neck, brushing kisses there. It took her several more tries than usual to fit the key into the lock with the distraction. This was new.

She wondered at the thought that the entire time she had known him, he had already done all of this and forgotten about it. How strange. And they had held back for so long.

Finally, the door opened and they tripped into the console room. He snagged her waist and backed her up towards the bed which had gotten larger since they'd been gone. She shoved a bit of embarrassed gratitude towards the TARDIS, who chuckled at her and then faded to the back of her mind.

When the backs of her legs hit the bed, the Doctor moved his hands to tangle through her hair, then lowered his mouth to hers. Their kiss was desperate and hungry, all depth and tongues.

_Rose, I can't let you leave me. I need you._ She wasn't sure if he'd meant for her to hear this desperate thought or not.

She had nothing to respond. It was not something she could soothe away for him. Because whether he could or not, they both knew that he was going to. If he didn't, she wouldn't be here in the first place.

But she didn't tell him that. She just kissed him back fiercely and held him close. Her hands slipped under his jacket and pushed it off of his shoulders. She grinned through their kiss when she heard it hit the floor. _Love that noise. I've wanted to hear it like this for so long._

She knew her mention of her past and his future made him worry more, so she swept her hands under his jumper to try and distract him. It worked fairly effectively since his own hands left her hair and grabbed for the bottom of her shirt, sweeping it up over her body.

He pulled away from the kiss to look at her. "Oh, Rose, you look beautiful." She grinned at him and pulled him forward into her again. So then, when he said that for her first time, when she was wearing a fancy dress about to meet Charles Dickens, he would already have seen her like this. Doing things out of order was bloody complicated.

Certain other things were not particularly complicated though. Like the feeling of his hands sweeping over her belly and up to her breasts, tracing over the lace while he dropped kisses over her face and jaw, moving down to her neck.

She could feel her nipples peak and she moaned as she pressed her chest into him. He flicked his tongue over her neck, kissed the dark mark he'd left there before with a murmur of apology.

She whispered a plea to him, wanting his fingers against bare skin, not through the lace. He grinned against her neck and slid finger tips over the fabric, taunting her. She retaliated by leaning up to him, pulling off his jumper.

At some point, they both had laid back onto the bed and now he was hovering over her, bare chested. She grinned and used a leg and hand to shove him over to the side, making him lose balance and fall back. She crawled over him and smiled down.

Now it was her turn to kiss and lick her way down his neck. He groaned her name and she smiled before biting down almost too hard right where the mark was on her. He thrust up wildly and involuntarily. "Damn it, Rose." The words were ground out through his teeth.

She ignored him and continued her slow path down his body. Now to his chest, she experimentally flicked his nipples with her tongue and he let out another low groan. Wonderful. She nibbled and sucked there for a very long moment before continuing down his belly, following a sparse trail of hair.

She darted her tongue into his belly button and he snapped. He grabbed her and hauled her back up his body, moaning as she put pressure on an extremely hard part of him, then took her mouth with his.

"You're so … fantastic," he muttered when their mouths parted briefly. She whimpered at the word on his lips.

He seemed overwhelmed by this small sound and flipped her over onto her back. Now it was her turn to squirm and make embarrassing noises as he moved his lips over her body. He unclipped her bra and was pulling it off her before she realized he even intended to do so, she was so overwhelmed by his lips on the swell of her breast.

"Beautiful," he whispered, as he drew back just to look at her. But that was never going to last long. He held out momentarily and then fell back to her, drawing a nipple into his mouth. She loved his inability to hold out and tease too much. He was simply too desperate for her.

Then again, he was excelling at teasing her here. Before long her hips were pumping at air as he lingered on one breast and then the other, taunting and nibbling and pulling at her. But it just wasn't enough.

In a moment of clarity, she shoved as much arousal as she could down the bond. He let out a long groan, then pulled up to glare at her. "You can't just do that Rose." His voice had deepened and gotten rougher. "Do you know what that does to me?"

She shook her head slowly, transfixed by the dark and obscenely attractive man before her. Then she felt him very deliberately send her an overload of his own arousal. She felt flooded, completely overwhelmed by sensation, mindless. _God, Doctor, please!_

And he could do nothing but comply, both pulling at the rest of their own clothes because they were far to far gone to do it for the other. Rose was quicker with less to remove and then was helping him haul down his jeans and pants, freeing that glorious erection from confinement.

She was conveniently located, so she dropped a kiss and slow lick on the head, grinning at his low, desperate moan. He pulled her up his body immediately. _Can't Rose, already too close._

But that didn't stop him from moving his own way down her body to nuzzle at the curls between her legs. She yelped a little as he touched his tongue to her clit for the first time.

_So perfect, My Rose. So wet for me. _A finger trailed lazily over her, dipping into her wetness. And god, she was dripping. This man turned her on just by looking at her, never mind doing anything near this flawlessly erotic.

His tongue flattened on her clit and pressed, and then slid around to flick at it while two fingers pushed inside of her. _So tight and all mine,_ he whispered to her along the bond.

She whimpered her agreement. Yes, all his, just don't stop! Maybe this thought had made its way down the bond because his fingers quickened their thrusting and he pursed his lips around her clit to suck hard once.

She was on a knife edge, so close to coming. And then he moved away. She almost cried out, but he was shifting into position to enter her too quickly for her to miss him much. _Together_, he demanded in her mind. _Need you with me this time._

And he thrust into her. Both of them let out inhuman sounds at the sensation, neither knowing which sound went to which mouth, they were so tangled up and lost in feeling. He pulled out slowly and then thrust back, starting up a pace which was steady and building, but also infinitely tender in a way that their previous times had been hard and fast.

She reached up to his face and pulled his mouth down to meet hers. Lips swept together and tongues danced, mimicking the actions of their lower bodies.

Their bond fired steadily, bringing them closer and closer together mentally until it was hard to say where she stopped and he started. And she was full, so full of adoration for this man. It was love in a purer, more complete form than she would ever have been able to imagine when she was just a shopgirl.

Despite both their longings to stay in this flawless moment of tender connection forever, their bodies were far too close to the edge. His thrusts sped involuntarily and he shifted a little to reach her neck which made him rub against the perfect spot inside of her. She fell back and let out a loud, pleading noise.

_Rose_, his mental voice was full of awe, adoration, intensity. She was beyond speech, unable to respond even his name, so fucking close.

He reached up and their mouths met again in a soul deep kiss that sent her flying over the edge. And in that perfect moment, clenching around him in a movement that made him shout and jerk once more before he was coming into her, the entirety of her thought was just how much she loved him.

_I love you._ Her mental voice reverberated down the bond, echoing in both their minds.

It took them a long time to come down from the intensity of their orgasms, both curling bonelessly into one another on the bed. Rose was fairly sure she was asleep before he finished shifting her into a comfortable position against him.

The Doctor did not fall right to sleep like Rose did. He lay watching her, curled up against his side and half on top of him, head rising and falling on his chest as he breathed.

Her words were still repeating in his mind and had been for the last half hour. She loved him. He was scared that those words could easily begin to label his own emotions as well. But his were based on their bond, on knowing the core of her so quickly.

Her words, though, were based on knowing him, experiencing the universe with him. She knew him, this regeneration and the next, better than he did. She knew the little things about him as well as the core. And she loved him.

And as incredible as this realization was, as much as it filled him with utter joy, it also filled him with a terrible knowledge. This could not last, them two tangled together outside of their own time streams. If he kept her, he was never going to meet her in the first place.

And besides, he was going to fall in love with her, with all the details and experiences and little things beyond the heart of her he already adored. He knew this with utter certainty. And just as certainly, he knew that there was a future version of himself out there who was mourning the loss of his Rose just as much as he was going to.

This wasn't the right her for him. Not yet. And as grim as the thought made him now, he knew it would only get worse if he let her stay for one trip. Or two. Or ten. No, he couldn't do that to himself, present or future.

He pressed a brief kiss full of his tumultuous emotion to her sleepy, half-parted lips. She cuddled closer to him in response and his heart felt as though it would explode with emotion.

And if a tear slowly trailed its way over his cheek because she was so dear to him and he was about to lose her, to be left with the holes of the Time War … well, there was no one awake to know.


	7. Chapter 6

**A/N:** Thank you to everyone who's reading along with me and infinite thanks to those kind enough to leave a review with some positive feedback! It means the world to me. This is the chapter in which we must bid our farewells to Nine. :-( I loved writing him and I'm going to miss him! As will Rose, I'm sure. :-)

**As It Must Be**

**Chapter 6**

Rose stirred in his arms only two hours after she had fallen asleep. He couldn't help but be a little disgruntled. He'd been hoping that she would sleep for the solid eight hours or more that humans usually did. After all, even he had been feeling sleepy with how much they'd worn each other out.

Not that he was about to waste a single second that he had left with this miraculous human on sleep. Not with the decision he'd just made about what had to be done when she woke up.

Her eyes blinked open and she shifted her head on his chest so that she was smiling up at him. "Hello," she said. Her voice was so bright that he thought he might cry with the force of emotion it inspired.

"Hello." His voice was tender and gentle. Her eyes swept down from his eyes to his lips and then over his chest to where her hand was pressed against his right heart. She met his eyes again and hers were darkened. She licked her lips unconsciously.

He felt a jolt of pure lust, but yanked himself out of it. No. They couldn't keep doing this or they would never stop.

"Rose," he said, and the grief in his voice made her start out of her growing arousal.

"Doctor, is something wrong?" Her voice was colored with concern for him.

"Oh Rose, I need to send you back to me. I want to keep you here, I want to more than you can imagine, I can't imagine going on without you, can't imagine forgetting you and losing –" His voice broke. She clung to him, pressed as much comfort down the bond as possible.

There was a long moment in which neither of them was quite up to speaking, but simply battled back the despair in the Doctor.

Finally he took a deep breath and met her eyes again. "Rose, if I don't bring you back to me now, I won't be able to."

They spent a long moment staring into one another's eyes, feeling the bond pulsing with closeness. "I don't wanna leave you Doctor." Rose finally broke in a whisper. "I love you and I can't leave you."

His voice didn't come to him the first time he tried to speak, too overwhelmed by the fervency in her voice. The second time he tried, it was audible. "You aren't leaving me. You'll be going right back to me, your Doctor."

She protested, "You are my Doctor!"

He smiled, feeling a little smugness at the cost of his future regeneration. "Me from your proper timeline I mean. Rose, if you don't leave, I'll never meet you in the first place. You can't stay. And if you don't leave now …"

His fingers clenched around her arms. "I don't want you to leave." His voice was little more than a whisper. "And that's only going to get worse the longer you stay."

She let out a little sobbing noise and buried her face in his chest. "And you're going to forget about this?"

He nodded into her hair, adoring the scent of her, the feel of her pressed against him. He shouldn't be indulging himself in it, he could feel his reluctance to release her growing with every moment he clung. "I'll trigger myself to remember when we're linear again though. I would never want to forget this."

She pulled away from him suddenly. "What if, what if your next regeneration doesn't, uh, doesn't want this?" She waved a hand between them.

"Doesn't want what?" he asked, honestly confused.

"Well, we've never, I mean, we aren't …" she shrugged awkwardly. "You don't feel this way about me. Sexually, I mean."

He was a little surprised that she could blush so red what with the fact that she was naked against him and all the activities they'd been up to in the last day. And then he registered fully what she'd said and actually let out a chuckle.

"Not want you? Rose, weren't you listening when I explained the bond?" She shrugged, embarrassed. "I will always want you."

Rose grimaced. "Well, that's almost worse, isn't it? I mean, you didn't when you weren't bonded to me, but now I'm going to go back and you'll get these memories back and you'll feel obligated to … to …"

The Doctor got a dark look in his eye and turned her to lie above her in a swift move. He took one hand up to her breast and caressed the nipple, then pinched it between finger and thumb. She whimpered a little at the sensation and he thrust involuntarily at the sound, cock pressing against her just exactly where she wanted it.

"Does that feel like obligation? Like it will ever become obligation?" His voice was deep and gravelly. He pulled away a little, reluctantly. "Just because I had more control in the future than I did when I met you this time doesn't mean I don't want it."

Rose struggled to emerge from the haze of lust he'd sent her into so quickly. He seemed so sure of himself, but he didn't even know himself!

But then again, the point still stood. If she didn't leave, he would never meet her in the first place. And no matter how much she adored this, adored them the way they were right now, she wouldn't sacrifice that for anything.

He could still feel doubt along the bond, but supposed he would just have to rely on his future self to disabuse her of the notion. The thought sent a fierce stab of jealousy through him. Jealous of himself. Ridiculous.

"How long until I meet you?" His voice was shaky and he surprised himself with the question. He'd been wondering, but hadn't really wanted to know the answer. And it betrayed such a weakness to her. Not that she hadn't already seen every weakness he had.

Rose smiled though. "I'm not sure. A while I guess, I saw pictures of you in other places and times. But Doctor," she moved her hand to caress his cheek, adoration in her eyes and the bond, "it's going to be fantastic."

He grinned at her. "I'm sure it is, Rose."

Incredible, the way she managed to cheer him up. "Alright, but we need to get you back. And we need to get you back while I can still let you go."

With that he sat up and pulled on the jeans lying near the bed. Rose made a noise of protest and sat up, grabbing an arm. "What are you doing?" she asked, sounding just a tiny bit panicky.

He frowned, there were so many things about bonding that he didn't know yet! The fear she was feeling at him moving away from her was not rational. Was it because of just having lost him, which had sent her here, or just because of the bond? How could they ever know?

There were so many details of Gallifreyan-human bonding that they didn't know yet. He took a deep breath and reminded himself that he couldn't be the one to work any of it out.

"Rose, I'm not leaving you. You're going to be coming right back to me." He heard her take a deep breath, but didn't turn to look at her.

"I know," she replied after a long moment, "But it won't be this version of you. And I love this version of you. Rough around the edges and calling me an ape and that ridiculous grin."

She sighed and he tried to quell the rise of pride and happiness, smugness at his future selves. "I'm the same man Rose. Still me."

"I know!" She said, a little offended, "But with different details. And I like these details." She ran a hand from his cheek down his chest.

He grinned and moved into her hand just a little. "You don't like my next self's details?" With her repeated reassurances toward this self, he began to feel a little bad for the man he was going to be.

Rose flushed and avoided his eyes. He frowned, "I know I've had some not-so-attractive regenerations Rose." Well, this was a complication he hadn't considered.

She shook her head quickly though. "Oh, no, I mean … " she blushed again. "Um, you're just fine."

She smiled and met his eyes again. "Bit pretty, actually," she teased. "And a bit of a flirt." She said it with a grin, but there was a note down the bond which made him tense.

"I wouldn't really flirt with anyone else, Rose, you know that, right?" She gave him a doubtful look and a weak smile.

"Look, why don't you tell me that when I see you, alright?"

He took a deep breath and nodded. Then resumed getting up. He proceeded to the console and was going to start hitting buttons when he realized he didn't actually know where he was going. "Er, where to?" He inquired, directing the question at the TARDIS.

She sent a wave of love over both of them, and then directed more detail at him. _I can take you there. I'll set the coordinates, you just need to hit the materialization sequence._

"Right," he nodded decisively, sparing a single glance at Rose, who was sitting on the bed with covers clutched to her chest, looking disheveled, beautiful, and conflicted. Then he tore his gaze back to the console and kept it there, dancing around the console to hit all the controls he needed to.

He grimaced as the TARDIS jerked violently again as they materialized. He looked over at the control screen, but there was no read-out. "Right, probably better that I not know." He nodded and swung the screen away from himself, turning back to Rose, who was still sitting in bed.

"We're here." He said. He felt like every word and movement had to be forced. How could he let her go? It was inconceivable.

Rose had her eyes closed. "Yes," she murmured, "I think that I can feel that." She opened her eyes again and smiled at him. "We're going to be just fine, Doctor. You're going to be just fine. I promise."

He pulled her into his arms, off the bed, keeping the blankets between them to try to prevent anything more from happening. "We're going to be much better than fine, Rose Tyler."

Their embrace held for a long series of minutes, neither willing to let go. Finally she pulled back a little. He met her watery eyes and watched the tear tracks run over her cheeks and his hearts nearly broke.

She reached up on tip-toe and pulled him down to her, only the pressure of their chests together keeping her blankets up. Their mouths met, lips and tongues moving together with desperation, as though they were trying to devour each other.

She had to break away again, gasping for breath. But at least her eyes had dried some. "I'll see you real soon, right?"

He nodded. "Yes." Rose reached down and picked up her clothes scattered about the TARDIS. He turned his back as she put them on, not wanting to let her out of his sight, but also knowing his limits. And watching Rose put clothes back on would be too much for his self-control.

After a moment, she grabbed his hand and he turned to find her looking at him with a faint smile. "I'm going to miss you. I do miss this you, so much."

He nodded, not trusting his vocal cords. And he squeezed her hand tightly, then pulled her towards the door. She followed reluctantly, then opened the door herself. They were looking across a green field towards another police box. Despite her grief, Rose couldn't help the start of joy she felt at seeing her proper timeline there in front of her.

She shut the door again and looked up at him. "I love you," she said. She knew he wouldn't say it back, but it didn't matter, he needed to know. Maybe if she repeated it enough, it would last through forgetting the rest of it. "What's gonna happen to you?"

He sighed. "After you leave I'll take the memories of the last few days and hide them in a corner of my mind and then put something like a perception filter up so I won't notice. And a trigger so that I will notice when the TARDIS helps me do so. Then the TARDIS will help knock me out. I'll wake up with nothing but a haze of what's happened since the Time War. But it shouldn't be too surprising that it's a blur for me."

She nodded. "Right." And then took a deep breath. "Okay then. Just, this."

It was as if he read her mind, though he hadn't needed to, because he leaned down as she leaned up. Their lips met in the most innocent and powerful kiss that they had shared yet. The mere press of lips sent waves of emotion surging down both sides of the bond.

For an infinite moment, they were utterly lost in one another.

The Doctor pulled back. "Go back to me." His voice was low and forced, full of barely restrained emotion.

Rose nodded, dizzy with the kiss and the emotions he'd sent her over their connection. She pulled herself away from his embrace and stepped out of the door. She sent one last, long look back at him, vision blurring a little with tears.

He stood, framed in the doorway, and smiled at her, then tipped his head to direct her towards the other TARDIS. She smiled back at him despite the tears. "I love you." She mouthed at him, then turned resolutely around and walked to the TARDIS with firm steps.

She touched the handle and it moved without her having to insert her key. She smiled, heart lightening. He was the same man, and that past man was going to find her soon enough. And this future version of that man was missing her.

The Doctor let out a deep sigh as he watched Rose open the door of the TARDIS opposite him. He closed the door of his own TARDIS firmly and ignored the ache from the bond as he moved away from her.

"Right! Dematerialization!" He felt the TARDIS reach out to him mentally with a near maternal caress.

_I wish I could dematerialize for you after you forget my Thief. I worry that it will hurt you to leave her._ The Doctor knew for a fact that it was going to hurt to leave Rose, though wasn't sure how much of that was going to come from the bond.

"She isn't my Rose. I couldn't keep her. This needs to be done." The TARDIS agreed with him, but it was with a tragic note in her hum.

He pressed the buttons to dematerialize slowly, nowhere near the frantic dance that it usually was. He didn't want to go.

Finally he was approaching the lever to pull them both into the time vortex. "Right, here we go." He took a deep breath, braced himself, and pulled down.

He could barely hear the grinding of the TARDIS through the stab of pain in his mind from separating from his bondmate. _Rose!_ His mind cried out for her, desperate, but she was gone from him, there was no one to cry out to.

The TARDIS sent glowing waves of love towards him, but they weren't enough to quell the feeling. He gasped. On a positive note, he'd thought it would hurt more than anything to hide these feelings, this connection, and these memories from himself. But nothing could hurt more than remembering and losing.

He constructed the curtain around the memories in his mind with the TARDIS's help, feeling some relief as he separated his conscious mind from the bond as much as possible. "Almost," he muttered to himself, struggling to force away all of the memories of the last few days. It was a difficult thing no matter how painful they were.

The TARDIS crowed in triumph when they both managed to corral all the memories. "Perfect! And now!" He slammed the curtain down on the memories with a faint wave of remorse.

Simultaneously, the TARDIS overwhelmed his centers of consciousness and he slumped the floor, knocked out.

She sighed deeply, lights flickering and a deep hum waving over the console room. She missed her pup as well and she was not to take away her own memories. But then, she was a TARDIS and he was a mere time lord. And she knew that her thief and pup were together just as they were apart. That was the nature of time, after all.

She took away the bed in the console room sadly, missing the little human who had slept cradled there. Then she softened the floor around her time lord and waited for him to wake up.

He was investigating the Nestene Consciousness. It seemed like all he did now was save the world. Not that it had been a rare occurrence before, but since the Time War, he didn't plan to sight see anymore. Just set coordinates for random and let his TARDIS take him where he was needed.

And now here he was in a basement, investigating the shop dummies as potential hosts for the consciousness. Sometimes he wondered at himself, wondered if there wasn't more to be done somehow. Or else, less to be done and more to enjoy. Every once in a while, he had the oddest aching sensation of something missing.

His people, obviously. It must be.

When he turned a corner in the basement and found those dummies menacingly approaching a blonde girl who'd been cornered, he didn't even think before reaching out to sneak around them and grab her hand.

"Run!" He called, and then registered the sensation of her hand in his.

There was a sharp tug of emotion in his mind which felt distinctly familiar, though he couldn't place it. And the ache which had been present since he woke up in the TARDIS after committing genocide of two races, one of which was his own, was gone.

He had plenty of time to mull this sensation over as they ran down corridors to the elevators. She was obviously just an ordinary human girl. He didn't recognize her at all. So why was she erasing his emptiness?

It was a good thing that he had to battle the dummies when they got into the elevator. He was worried he would never have dropped her hand if he hadn't had to.

He must have imagined it though, since as soon as their hands were no longer touching the emptiness was right back. She was just another stupid ape and he didn't know why he'd been telling himself any differently for a moment there.

Of course, even so, he found he couldn't leave her completely alone. Even after telling her to leave, he found himself spinning back to her, "I'm the Doctor by the way, what's your name?"

She looked confused, lost, definitely not someone who could fill telepathic holes in his mind. "Rose." She said. The name did something strange to his brain, making it glow almost golden for a moment. He must be going insane. Well, all the better if he did die in this explosion then.

"Nice to meet you Rose. Run for your life!"

He found he was barely surprised and more than a little pleased when he ended up at her flat while chasing down the signal from the Nestene Consciousness. He felt the same flares of sensation, of companionship and elimination of his isolation every time she touched him. Strange, very strange.

"Rose Tyler." He rolled the syllables around in his mouth as he read them off her mail. There was the same pleasant flares of gold in his brain. Odd.

And she followed him, she questioned him, she kept close to him and touched him. He found himself with a stupid grin on his face the whole time regardless of what was appropriate for the situation because it was just so _not_ _empty_. Fantastic, that's what it was.

Later that day, he found her in the center of trouble, again. It was becoming a pattern, that. And this time in their fleeing, he led her back to his TARDIS. She ran inside once, ran right back out again, and then came hesitantly back in.

He pretended he wasn't paying as much attention to her as he was, focusing on getting the TARDIS to work with him to find the source of the Nestene Consciousness with her boyfriend's head.

"Um, the inside's bigger than the outside?" She asked hesitantly. He and the TARDIS both loved this part. That predictable phrase. So his ship turned her attention slightly from the head she was using to trace the signal to notice the girl who'd walked through the doors.

He was almost knocked over by the overwhelming wave of adoration, welcome, and love that his ship sent the human. _What?!_ He asked her in shock. But she didn't respond to his confusion. She seemed disappointed that the girl hadn't responded to her telepathic wave at all.

But she brightened back up quickly enough, humming happily, adjusting the internal temperature to one typical for humans, continuing to send the girl waves of love she wasn't picking up on.

_Excited I'm not by myself? Don't get your hopes up, she's not staying._ The Doctor told his ship, annoyed at her overreaction to this girl who was confusing enough already.

The only response was a happy hum and _Rose Tyler! _whispered repeatedly through the ship. The TARDIS must have been more worried for him than he'd given her credit for.

After she'd saved his life and they'd saved the Earth, he found his opinions on her may have shifted a little. Perhaps he might have her along a little more permanently. Companions used to be the very best of him and the TARDIS already liked this girl. And she'd proved herself smart, useful in a pinch, and a good runner. Didn't need much more than that.

"Right then, I'll be off. Unless uh, I don't know, you could come with me." Perfect, just the right amount of levity. Seemed very much like it didn't matter to him either way. He may have belied that statement with desperation in his eyes just a little though. Something very deep in him inexplicably hated the thought of being apart from her.

For a long exchange, he could feel the yes building in her. She loved this, the danger and the adventure, already. But then she turned him down. He blinked at how very much it hurt.

He dematerialized them into the vortex and leaned against the console in a strange sort of empty shock. He'd smiled. He'd been happy with her. And now it was gone again.

_Ask her again._ The TARDIS didn't usually talk to him with words like this, but right now her mental voice was clear and definite. _Go back and ask her again. You forgot to mention something._

He pretended to himself that he only went back because the TARDIS made him. But when she ran towards them both with a huge grin, he knew it wasn't just the TARDIS's joy that he was feeling.

He'd gotten more than he expected with Rose. In every way, but at this moment he was referring merely to the base, human, and physical. Sure, he'd noticed that she was a relatively pretty ape, but that hadn't factored into his decisions that first day at all.

It wasn't until he had taken her to the past and she'd changed into that ridiculously beautiful dress that he'd been walloped in the face with something he'd been judiciously ignoring up until that point. Unfortunately, a giant erection which made his trousers feel several sizes too small was rather hard to ignore.

And it went on from there. Hugs were a little too long, briefly touching was fraught with tension, outfits and new hairstyles were major events for him every morning. He was more than a little disgusted with himself. The TARDIS, on the other hand, seemed overjoyed at his inappropriate reactions. He could swear she was helping Rose find the most attractive outfits in the wardrobe room.

And then the whole romantic aspect been shoved in his face more than ever when Adam came on board. Every time Adam so much as looked at Rose, every time he had to watch the pretty boy approach her, every sense in him screamed for him to claim her. _Mine, mine, mine!_

Thank goodness Adam messed up quickly and had given him an excuse to kick him off.

He really wasn't sure how much longer he could take this before he snapped and did something incredibly rash.

The Gamestation was where he was going to die then. Well, he could handle that. It was horrible that he wasn't going to be able to live out the rest of Rose's life with her, or as long as she would let him, but he'd already received much more than he deserved.

The familiar grinding sound of the TARDIS was a shock. And then Rose was stepping out of his ship, a Rose glowing with power which called to every bit of him.

When he stepped up to her to kill this regeneration by kissing her, it seemed the most instinctual thing in the world.

As their lips met, there was a long instant as the time vortex flowed through them both where he felt a sheer awe. _Everything is just as it must be. Because she made it so. Echoes throughout time and space._

Her lips against his, pressing with an overload of emotion and power, were familiar. And that didn't actually surprise him. She filled his head for a shining moment. _My Doctor_. She cried out to him.

_My Rose._ He responded.

And then the light faded from both of them as he sent it back to the TARDIS. But for one moment quickly fading into the background, everything had been perfectly clear.

And one thing still was. Rose Tyler was everything.

Far in both their futures, Rose opened the door to the TARDIS with joy, shaking off her grief at leaving her first Doctor as she prepared to see him again and to have him remember her from the first time. He was going to be so happy to have her back! And surprised maybe? She wasn't sure how exactly she'd gotten back in the first place, so maybe he wouldn't be surprised, if he'd made it happen.

Then, she registered the interior of the TARDIS. It was nothing she'd ever seen before, futuristic and white, the console larger than ever and topped by spinning circles.

The TARDIS met her with a familiar wave of joy though and she smiled with delight at the welcome, despite how confused she was at the appearance. "You look beautiful, old girl!" She said, beaming.

She took a few steps into the TARDIS and turned around to admire her fully. And then a voice and bouncing steps came toward her. "Back so soon, Tyler? I thought you were gone for –"

An unfamiliar man came bounding around the console. He had floppy brown hair and was wearing a jacket which flared cinematically at his knees and a bow tie. He skidded to a stop. "Ah, not my Rose then."

She felt a glowing connection in her mind flare as he spoke. A connection that she'd just gotten used to with a man who had a very different appearance. "Not my Doctor then." She said, smiling wryly. "Well, you always were horrendous at driving."

* * *

**A/N: **Surprise maybe? :-D Let me know what you thought!**  
**


	8. Chapter 7

**A/N:** Really sorry for the delay everyone! I'm actually on vacation in South Africa right now and I was expecting there to be much more wifi and downtime than there has been. But I do promise you that this story is finished and it's only a matter of time until it all gets edited and posted. :-) Thanks for your patience!  
On this chapter: I really hope you enjoy what I did with Rose and the Doctor's future! I'm nervous about this. I loved writing it though - Rose/Eleven is so FUN. :-D

**As It Must Be**

**Chapter 7**

What Rose was presuming to be a future regeneration of the Doctor laughed and flailed about with his hands a little as though unsure what to do with them. She looked him over and grinned. He looked awkward in his own skin, younger even than his pin-striped version, and ridiculously attractive at the same time.

He fiddled with his floppy bang. "I am not bad at driving! That was all the TARDIS. She told me she was setting the right coordinates. I always thought that she did … guess you've been keeping secrets from me."

Then, he frowned down at his hands, which were twisting around each other. "Er, would you mind if I?" He took a couple more skipping steps toward her and extended a hand.

She furrowed her eyebrows and then realized what he wanted and smiled at him. She gave him her hand and he made a happy noise as their fingers laced together. "Rose Tyler," he beamed, "It is wonderful to see you."

As he said these words, he hesitantly tapped at her mind, as if asking for entry. She let out a surprised laugh. "Are you not rude this time around then?" She asked, tongue teasing at her lips. She had an irrepressible urge to get under this regeneration's skin. He seemed so gentlemanly and polite. God, but he would be attractive with that façade stripped away, convincing him to bite and mark and fuck like the regeneration she had just come from.

She felt herself get embarrassingly wet and flushed a dark red. He raised a questioning eyebrow and she realized he was still waiting patiently for permission to enter her mind. What a change! She wiped away her most recent thoughts and opened herself to him.

He made that same happy noise and slid into her mind, lighting up the marks of his essence all over her brain. She did the same without thought, feeling his surface emotions rise up to embrace her, and grinned up at him hugely. "Rose Tyler." He beamed.

"Doctor," she said. They stood there, both grinning like fools for a long moment.

Finally curiosity got the best of her. "So, where is future me then? You thought I was her, didn't you?"

"Ah, out and about," he said, pulling her up toward the console to fiddle with buttons on the console with the hand that wasn't clutching hers. This made her smile, reminding her of his pin-striped version who also couldn't sit still for more than ten seconds at a time. "I was supposed to be fixing the TARDIS. She's been temperamental, but now I think she was just keeping me here for you, weren't you Sexy?"

Rose raised an amused eyebrow. "Sexy?"

"Ah," he said, avoiding her eyes, "well, long story. You'll see! It was rather, well, fantastic." He grinned at her like a fool and stroked the console with familiar affection.

"Anyway! You, Tyler, are out with Clara! You're going to love her. Well, I think you will. She's got secrets, I'm not sure what …" He drifted off into a thoughtful expression, then his eyes cleared and he refocused on her. "Right! Spoilers. And all that."

"You retained your babble, I see." Rose said, grinning at him. "So I get back to my version of you then? And everything works out? Who's Clara?"

"Yes! Yes, oh Rose it's just wonderful. Very, very cool. And don't worry about Clara, pretend I didn't mention her. Now, the question is just why exactly are you here and not in your proper timeline."

She shrugged and stepped into him a little. It was a little alarming how, within just one conversation, she had managed to slip precipitously in love with him with every word. She shouldn't have been surprised, it had been much the same when she'd met her second Doctor, but still, it was all so sudden.

Neither of them had said anything for a long moment as he seemed to realize that she was standing only inches away from him. "Er, you're very close here." He said, and she almost laughed. He may have retained his previous regeneration's babble, but he seemed to have lost his ability to flirt. "I mean, no belly."

She lost her smile quickly. "Belly?" She asked, a little shrilly. "Are you saying that I get fat? What on Earth was that supposed to mean?"

His hands began to flutter again. "No, no, no, shut up!" She wasn't sure if he was talking to her or himself, but either way she concluded that thinking he'd lost his rude streak might have been a little premature. "In fact, doing an almost direct comparison right now, I have to say that I think you really are more attractive pregnant. If only future you was here to appreciate me saying that."

Her jaw dropped. "Pregnant?" Her voice was squeaky.

"Whoops." He said, "Pretend you didn't hear that?" His voice was weak.

"Pregnant?" she asked again, weakly.

"Right, not pretending. Well, yes. When I said that it was impossible between humans and Time Lords I, er, didn't quite realize how not-human you'd become. More possible than I thought."

Rose's eyes were still wide. "Well, I guess I shouldn't be surprised. You and impossible are practically best friends."

He grinned and Rose couldn't help the smile back. Some things seemed to be constant over regenerations and that idiotic grin was one of them. "So you're saying you don't think I'm attractive when I'm not pregnant?" she teased.

He flailed a little with his hands again. "What, no! You know that I always find you …" his eyes darkened a little as they swept down her body and back up again. Rose found she was flushing as well.

Suddenly he was meeting her eyes again suspiciously. "Rose Tyler, are you teasing me? You are! Goodness, it took you weeks to get back in the swing of things in the future. Course, that could have been the seventy-five years of experience with the old me. You get into quite a rut you know, get used to the same old face. But still, I like the changes." He preened a little, caressing his bow tie.

"Hang on," Rose said, halted at an earlier statement, "Seventy-five years?! Seventy-five? And you have me pregnant now?! But I'd be – that's just …"

"Oh, right." He looked flustered again. "I am terrible at this paradoxical thing. Any more and I'm going to end up having to wipe your memory of all this …"

Rose raised a hand to halt the oncoming babble. "First, you are not wiping my memory of anything Mister. Second, you're going to explain about how I'm over ninety and pregnant. Unless it's only been seventy-five years for you and you've abandoned me somewhere! Or I don't get back to you for a long time?"

She seemed to be devolving into a panic, so he reacted in a tried and true manner. He yanked her the rest of the way towards him and planted his lips on hers.

Rose marveled at the sensation. She'd gotten used to her first Doctor's lips in the few days they had been together, and this different man felt remarkably similar. Of course, these coherent thoughts lasted all of a few seconds before devolving into a haze at the pure sensations.

He was so very good at this. Kissing her first Doctor was all passion and emotion, and while those emotions were very present in this kiss as well, he was accompanying them with a startlingly perfect sliding of lips, sucking her lower between his and biting with just exactly the right amount of pressure to make her moan.

The noise made him break away from her with a smug grin. She wanted to kiss it off him, but had the sinking feeling that that action would backfire on her.

"I will say," he said in a low voice, still grinning at her, "the lack of large growth just here makes some things much more convenient." His hand stroked over her flat abdomen as he spoke and then he pulled her flush against him.

She let out a whimper at the sensation. "Mm," he grinned in delight, "and look you're so easy! Don't know any of my tricks."

As he finished this statement, he moved her head up with one hand and dipped his head to swirl his tongue around a spot near the pulse point of her neck that made her actually cry out.

He laughed with delight at the sound. "Brilliant. Splendid. But don't be too loud or you'll make The Baby come running."

She blinked up at him, unsure whether he was actually making no sense or if he'd just addled her mind with simple application of his tongue to her neck. Knowing him, probably both.

He seemed to be waiting for her to respond, but when she didn't, grinned again. "Wonderful, I love it when you're speechless." And then he leaned down and took her lips again.

Sick of his arrogance about his skills, she kissed back hard this time, tangling her tongue with his, flicking against the top of his mouth, sliding along his bottom lip. This time when they broke apart, he was panting and wide eyed. "Then, you always were a natural," he muttered.

"We probably shouldn't be doing this," he said, then bent to kiss her again. His eyes were significantly darker when they parted. "Should get you back to me."

"Right." Rose replied, battling for coherency and control of her breathing. "Sides, your Rose could come back anytime now."

His eyes were fixating on her lips and she could feel him pulsing with arousal over the bond. "No, no, she'll be gone quite a while. Spa day. She'll be wanting all the relaxation and time away that she can get."

"You stress her out?" She teased, trying to keep her own eyes on his and failing rather spectacularly.

"No, no! It's The Baby. He's rather a terror." He said the last in a confidential whisper, which meant he drew her even closer and whispered into her ear. Her breath caught at the sensation and she knew he could hear and feel her emotions.

His mouth darted down and caught her earlobe, curling his tongue around it in a way which ought to be illegal. When he drew back she had to close her eyes to fight back how devastatingly attractive his darkened green eyes and that floppy hair crossing over them was.

There was something she ought to be asking about. Right. "The Baby. What does that mean?"

He looked vaguely uncomfortable and rocked back on his heels. "Well, I probably shouldn't have said that. You know how it is. Best not to know these kind of things, right?"

She gave him a glare. He couldn't just pick and choose what he told her and didn't. This whole conversation was giving the future away. His eyebrows furrowed as she deliberately pressed the anger at him. "You're disturbingly good at that already. Using the bond I mean. I always thought it was just the years of practice, but …"

"Doctor, focus. Seventy-five years. The Baby. Explain."

He gave a deep and put upon sigh. "And here I thought you learned that voice from Amy. More like she learned it from you." Rose ignored his mentioning of additional cryptic comments, focusing hard on those she most wanted to understand.

"Right. Well, as I said, you aren't quite human anymore. You and the TARDIS have gotten all tangled up in your mind and she keeps fixing you when things go wrong. Even when they're things that are really supposed to go wrong, like the natural, human aging process. So, seventy-five years." He met her eyes then, looking up from his hands which had been gesturing wildly.

There was utter joy written all over him and she couldn't help but grin back. "That's – well, fantastic."

He beamed back. "I know, isn't it?" And then picked her up by her armpits and swung her in a little circle before planting her back on the ground and firmly placing his lips back on hers.

It was a very long moment before she managed to bring herself to pull away from him. "I haven't forgotten the second bit."

He looked uncomfortable. "Look, Rose, when you came back to me, your version of me, you knew about the aging thing already. I thought the TARDIS had told you. But I definitely ought to limit the amount you learn about this future."

He sounded all firm when he said it, but his eyes never met hers, fixated still on her lips. She smiled, adoring the power she had over him. Even if her current Doctor wasn't attracted to her it was nice to know that this future version would be.

"Right, well, I suppose if you won't tell me, we could just occupy ourselves otherwise?" She asked with a tongue-touched grin.

His pupils dilated and he pulled her closer to him almost reflexively. "Well, I mean, I ought to get you back." He sounded not certain of this statement at all.

"You will!" She reassured quickly. "But maybe, first …" She let her fingers finish her sentence as they slid down the front of his jacket, reaching dangerously close to his trousers before he grabbed her hand.

"Rose Tyler." He groaned, "You're going to be the death of me." And then he was moving her, backing her up until her bum hit the console.

"This is familiar." She teased, shifting her hips ever so deliberately to grind against where he was pinning her to the console. She was rewarded with a groan and involuntary thrust back. Yes, this regeneration definitely was still attracted.

"More familiar to me, though you wouldn't know it. My Rose, always getting the upper hand." He muttered. He would have sounded bitter, if he hadn't been thrusting his hips into her ever so slightly the whole time. And if the latter half hadn't been whispered into her neck.

He pulled back and looked her over, grinning delightedly when it took a couple blinks for her to focus on him. "I love this." He said, running a finger over the dark bruise on her neck. "I was a little rough back then, hm? But you liked it, didn't you Rose?"

He leaned down and swept his tongue over the mark, leaning back again as she whimpered. "It amazes me, you know. That you can adapt to new regenerations with barely a blink of an eye."

"You're all my Doctor," she said defiantly.

He smiled at her. "Yes, I am." And then they were kissing again and neither had much clarity beyond that fact. She vaguely noticed that she'd managed to get his jacket off of him, but that his bow tie was proving a struggle and it was keeping her from his chest.

Her moaned complaint made him pull a hand off of where he was stroking her sides to yank at his own clothes. She rewarded him for the action by tugging her shirt over her head and then dropping her head to kiss and nibble at the chest he'd exposed to her.

"R-Rose." He stammered out, "Ah, we should probably, goodness you're incredible at that, should probably move to – Eep!" her fingers had moved to stroke over the erection clearly straining his trousers.

"What, we only do it in beds in this regeneration?" she asked, teasingly. This version really did pull out every tongue-touched tease in her. "That's a little dull."

His eyes flashed at her. "I'll show you dull, Rose Tyler."

His lips were devouring hers again, this time with a little more force, nipping at her lips and sucking hard on her tongue. And his hand was tripping over her chest, thumb finding a pebbled nipple through her bra and rubbing it in an incredible little figure eight.

His other hand slid over her stomach, stroking, "It's strange to not have …" he murmured, then locked their lips again, not bothering to finish the sentence. His hand finished its trek to dip under the waistband of her shorts.

She made a high pitched gasping sound which he swallowed with a grin. His fingers danced around her clit and down to circle her entrance. She whimpered and he grinned against her jaw, slowly kissing his way to her ear. "You're dripping Rose. Like this new body, do you?"

She couldn't find the words to speak, so she just nodded desperately. He tutted and sucked an earlobe into his mouth, swirling around it with his tongue. She lost her grip on him with this and had to grab on to the edges of the console to keep from falling.

"No, Rose, tell me. And show me." He eased away from her, lightening his touches just when she'd been desperate for more, harder, faster.

"Yes, yes, I love this body." Her voice was weak and desperate, pressing up into him as she strained for more pressure.

_And? _His voice was in her mind this time.

She whimpered at him and then focused enough to push forward into his mind with everything she had, bringing her arousal with her.

He let out a loud groan and she couldn't help but feel a little smug. That's what he got for teasing her. _God, Rose, that was so fast and hard and complete. _Even his mental tone was low and growling.

He could feel her laughing at him and growled a little, resuming pressure where his hands had fallen slack when she'd pressed into him. He slid the cup of her bra down and met her bare nipple with his finger tips, simultaneously thrusting two fingers inside of her.

Her head fell back weakly and she made a helpless noise. His hand on her breast slipped up to grab the back of her head and pull her mouth to his. She ground down on his fingers and moaned into his mouth as he slipped his fingers to tease around her clit, then brought them back to thrust inside of her and curl just there.

Her hands flew up from the console to pull him towards her, stroking and scraping spasmodically over his chest and back, one hand flying up to tangle in his floppy hair and press his mouth tighter to hers so that their teeth clashed.

God she was so close, right there, if he would just touch her just …

"Ugh! Dad! Disgusting!"

The Doctor froze, yanking away from their kiss but not moving away from her body, though he pulled swiftly out of their mental connection. Rose was left clutching to the console in a daze, sliding back from the edge not nearly quickly enough to register what exactly was happening in front of her.

"Hold on, how did Mum get back so early? Hold on …"

At this, the Doctor sprung to life, bending down to snag Rose's shirt and shoving it at her before he turned around. "Right! Ah, erm … Junior! There's a lot to explain and you really shouldn't be here!" He sent a glare at the time rotor, and the TARDIS chuckled in his head.

Meanwhile, Rose had come back to reality enough to register what was happening. Certainly enough to scramble to put on her shirt, and then enough to peer around the Doctor, who was very conveniently placing himself directly in front of her.

There was a skinny boy who looked about twelve standing in the doorway with a shock of brown hair sticking every which way on his head. His eyes were huge, gaping at them both in shock.

"Mum?" He breathed, then bounded around the console towards her.

Was he referring to her? But then, that must mean … She turned her focus to the man who was still shirtless, eyes darting from child to Rose and back again and very deliberately shutting her out of his thoughts and emotions.

"Ah, this is brilliant! You always told me I was going to get to meet baby you one day! Fantastic!" He darted around the Doctor like he was experienced at doing so and then hugging her tightly.

Something deep within her which felt very much like her bond to the Doctor tugged sharply.

The Doctor was quickly pulling the kid away. "You definitely should not be touching her. What do you mean Rose told you about this? She told you about this and she didn't tell me?" He looked vaguely outraged.

Typical, never focusing on the issues at hand. Well, at least now she'd gotten her answer about who 'The Baby' was. Although this near adolescent was certainly not a baby.

She put the cards together and looked up at him. "You don't want to tell me his name!" She accused. Well, perhaps he wasn't the only one with a knack for fixating on extraneous information.

He looked uncomfortable. "Well, it would sway you! In the name debate, that is!"

She looked over at the child, her son. "Do I win the name debate then?" She asked, feeling like she was in an alternate universe.

She caught the boy nodding enthusiastically before the Doctor was shifting to block her view of him again. "Stop it! Both of you! Paradoxes and … she shouldn't even know you exist!"

"Oh come on Dad, she's always known I existed!" Her son sounded awfully cheery to be in the face of universe-ending paradox. "So get off it. And I can't believe you were doing that in the console room. Again. I thought we had an agreement."

He sounded like a disappointed parent disciplining a child. And with the way the Doctor dropped his head, he was getting that feeling as well. "She obviously does not have an agreement with you!" He gestured wildly at Rose.

"Well, I don't blame her. Isn't she just twenty right now? And newly bonded." He scoffed and then turned his accusatory gaze back on his father. "You aren't some horny teenager though!"

The Doctor's brows were furrowed in something which was definitely a pout.

Rose's eyebrows flew up. "Excuse me!" She whispered to the Doctor, "Horny teenager?! He's what, twelve? Not exactly …"

The Doctor waved a hand at her. "Gallifreyans mature differently than human children. He's nineteen. And mentally far beyond that."

Rose blinked at the fact that this child was almost her age. "Huh." She said, at a loss for words. "Er, is it awkward then that you and I, uh … our age difference I mean, does that bother you?"

He turned to her and blinked with confusion. The boy laughed. "No worries Mum, he's pretty fully integrated into human culture. I don't think that's even occurred to him before."

The Doctor grimaced and Rose became abruptly aware that he'd never shifted their lower bodies apart, which was good because no matter how mature this son of theirs was, it was definitely not okay for him to be observing his father's very prominent erection.

"Look, J- er … son of mine. If you could just give us a little space." He made a very unsubtle shoo-ing motion.

Rose glared at him. "Doctor, that's my child you're shooing away from you!"

The Doctor turned back to her and gave her a pleading look that would have fit better on the twelve year old. Well, nineteen-year-old, apparently.

The unnamed son showed no sign of heeding his father's request to leave. She smiled at him, looking away from the Doctor. "So what is your name then?"

He grinned, looking adorably like her timeline's Doctor, and stepped up to shake her hand around his father's body. "It's J-"

"Hold on, hold on! Have I taught you nothing about timelines?" The Doctor looked incensed.

The boy rolled his eyes. "Oh please, you not wanting her to know she wins the name arguments does not count as corrupting timelines."

"I'm not surprised, Doctor." She said smiling. This may be weird, but she and the Doctor lived on weird. And if it was weird, it was the very best kind of weird. "You're easy to persuade." She accompanied this last with a subtle twist of her hips which made him squeak and glare at her wide eyed.

Luckily, her son seemed oblivious. Maybe nineteen, but clearly not pubescent yet if he was that oblivious to the sexual tension here. Or else maybe this was just too common an occurrence for him to care. She beamed at the thought.

"Jack!" He called out. "My name is Jack."

Rose laughed at the Doctor's extremely put out expression. "Your name is not Jack." He said, irritably, "It's Jabhat al Acrab. After the final star in the constellation Scorpius and host to a dozen most excellent planets that we visit on a regular basis."

He and Jack engaged in a long moment of silence, staring at one another. He broke the gaze first. "And, alright, sometimes, that's a bit of a mouthful and we call you Jack."

Jack rolled his eyes and smiled at Rose, "It's after Grandma and Uncle Jack." In a stage whisper he continued, "And it's what you wanted."

"Alright time for you to go back to your lab. That's been quite enough paradox-risking chit-chat for one day." Rose giggled at the Doctor's frustrations.

"And," he darted a glance at Rose, then fixated on his son with bright eyes, "Did you get the sonic regressor to work? Because I had the genius idea - if you just try and shatterfry the plasma shell and then dial up the radiation to delta waves, you could accelerate the rotation patterns!"

Jack's eyes lit up and he was suddenly looking at the Doctor like the world revolved around him. "That's genius! I've been sticking to beta waves because I was worried about damage to the plasma casing, but …"

He dashed back towards the door he came out of. "Thanks Dad, you're brilliant!" he said, halting before he disappeared. "And Mum, don't leave without coming to say goodbye, won't you?" And he sounded so childish and hopeful when he said it that her heart swelled.

"Of course I will!" But before she'd even finished the sentence, the kid had bounded out of sight down the hallway.


	9. Chapter 8

**A/N: **Sorry for the long, long delay! I will be finishing this story, promise - it's already written! But I haven't had internet for the last few weeks and it's still going to be sketchy for another three. Thank you so much for your patience and I hope you enjoy this chapter!

**As It Must Be**

**Chapter 8**

The Doctor buried his head in her shoulder. "The mood has been utterly ruined," he bemoaned. "And now I have this," he thrust towards her, highlighting the rather delicate state he was still in, "and nothing to do with it. This is why we stopped doing this in the console room." He scowled.

She grinned at him. "You complain, but I caught the adoration there every time you looked at him." She poked him accusatorily in his bare chest with a tongue-touched smile. "You love being a dad."

He caught her hand in his and smiled at her with intensity in his eyes. "Oh Rose Tyler, you have no idea. The gifts you've given me are incomprehensible. Now, as a thank you, how about I just …" He moved to duck his head back down to her neck and slid one hand under her shirt again.

She grabbed the wandering hand before she fell into that sensual daze he was so good at putting her in. Again. "Hold on, we are not doing this in the console room. And we really shouldn't be doing this at all probably! What were you just saying about paradoxes?"

He pouted at her. "Roooose, that was just for Jack! I'm a full time lord. I can stop paradoxes from happening. And you look so …" The end of his sentence was muffled by her jaw as he began to nibble along her jaw line.

"Hmph. I thought you said I was more attractive pregnant." She made a valiant effort to sound unaffected and thought she might have almost succeeded.

"Mm," he hummed around that obscenely sensitive spot at her pulse point. "I think I need more data for comparison."

"Doctor," she moaned, and then gave up a little. The bang flopping into those green eyes melted her resistance as he looked up at her, smoldering.

"Something I can help you with, Rose?" he asked. She almost hit him for his flippancy.

"Maybe somewhere else? We must have a bedroom, right?"

"Hm." He looked her up and down as though debating the relative merits of guaranteed privacy versus being able to have her right here. Rose tried to look stern, like there was no way this was going to proceed in this room.

Her eyes were dilated and cheeks were flushed, so she probably failed.

Regardless, he seemed to fall on the side of privacy without her ultimatum. "Right then, Tyler, off we go!"

He swept her into his arms, one behind her back and one in the crook of her knees. She made a surprised squeak. "This is a little domestic," she teased him.

"Ah, domestic. Well, some things you come to embrace," he squeezed her tighter to his chest, "because the perks are just that good."

She shivered with pleasure at the depth of his voice which scraped over her senses like his teeth on her neck. She knew she was lighting up the bond with arousal by the way he laughed at her as he carried her down the hallways.

In retaliation, she geared up to shove arousal at him, finding that it had been an extremely effective counter strategy thus far. He froze and clutched at her convulsively before she could. "Wait, wait! If you do that this is going to end on that wall." He gestured towards the side of the hall.

She pouted for a moment, unsure that this was really such a bad thing. He felt so good, solid and male, against her and he smelled divine. There was a deep dark smell that he had retained through regenerations which reminded her of the TARDIS right after they materialized somewhere. Adventure and time and mystery.

He suddenly dipped his mouth to meet hers in a hungry kiss that was deep and dark from the moment it began. "Rose Tyler, you always know just what to think to make me insane. How do you do that?" he asked hoarsely when they finally broke apart.

She took a long moment to catch her breath. "Dumb luck?"

"Right. No more distractions until we're in a room with a lock. I mean it." He turned them and was about to briskly walk down the hall when a door appeared on the closest wall.

"Ah," he beamed. "Thank you old girl."

Rose blushed hard at the thought of the TARDIS watching them, but knew it was something she needed to get over. Not much she could do about it, and she knew the TARDIS didn't find it awkward in the least.

Then they were walking into an extremely messy room with an extremely large bed in the center. But she couldn't quite fixate on that yet because she was too busy noticing her clothes, brushes, and make-up products scattered all over the room.

Well, that was strange to say the least. And made her think of things from a new angle.

"Er, is this bad? I mean, should we be doing this? Isn't it a little like … I don't know, cheating?"

The Doctor dropped her in the middle of the bed and stared in confusion. "Cheating?"

Rose waved a hand around herself. "I mean, on future me! You have this whole life with her and you're coming in here, bringing me in her room to, to ..."

The Doctor blinked. "Is that what you were thinking when you were with my previous regeneration? That you were cheating on the me from your own time line?"

She blushed. "No, because he's you."

"Exactly!" he beamed. "Rose, the bond wouldn't let me cheat if I wanted to. Which I very much do not. And you and my Rose are the same person. So it's really up to you. Are you okay with me being with a previous version of you?"

His eyes danced like he already knew the answer. Which he probably did. "Yeah, I suppose that'd be okay." She reached up and took his hand, pulling him willingly to settle on the bed by her. "S'like a preview, I guess," she finished.

The Doctor moved his hand from hers to stroke through her hair, down her neck and across her chest to settle over her heart on the swell of her breast. "Yes, a preview. And let's make this a film you're very much looking forward to seeing." In the span between statements, his voice had dropped to that growling note she already recognized.

With that, his hand moved from her heart to cover her breast fully while his mouth moved to cover her lips. Between kisses, she managed to get out, "Jealous of your previous regeneration?"

"Oh always," he whispered against her jaw, slowly licking his way down to her breasts. "When I first regenerated into this body you pouted forever. Didn't tell me you'd already seen this regeneration, naughty girl. Made me ever so jealous of how much you missed the old me."

"I know they're all-" she was cut off by a gasp as he swept off her shirt and his lips found her nipple through her bra. "All you," she finished hurriedly when he paused.

"Hmm," he mused, "I still think you missed that tongue I had. Great tongue that."

And then there was no talking for a long while as he proved that this tongue was extremely capable as well, doing unspeakably incredible things around the breasts he'd pulled out of their cups.

Finally he reached behind her to impatiently unfasten her bra and shove it aside. She took advantage of his distraction to roll them both so he was beneath her. Finally to have a grasp on some control in the face of this man who knew an unsettling amount about her body!

"Hello," he said beneath her, voice scraping along her pleasure centers in ways that she was sure he was aware of based on the smug grin on his face.

Well that was no good. She sat up, straddling his hips and ground down on him while she reached up to cup her own breasts, unconsciously trying to echo the motions of his mouth a moment ago.

She was rewarded with a very loud moan from the man beneath her. "Rose, are you trying to kill me?" he asked, heated and no longer in that carefully crafted seduction tone.

He tugged her down to him and their mouths met in a wet and messy kiss, tongues slipping against each other. And then the grabbed on tight to her hips and moved her in a half-circle which made both of them cry out into each others mouths and made her bite down on his lip that she'd been sucking on a little too hard.

She tried to be apologetic as she swept over the spot with her tongue and tasted blood, but it was a weak cover for the shot of possession she actually felt. Apparently she hadn't hid that over the bond because he cried out again at her emotion and flipped her forcefully beneath him.

"That's my girl." He grinned down at her for a moment and then their mouths were battling again and they were both definitely winning. His hands were busy, one sliding teasing fingers over her breast, the other sneaking along her side, drawing little circles in spots that made her gasp and whimper until he got to her shorts.

"How are you still wearing these?" He asked in what sounded like genuine confusion as he worked at the button and shoved them and her knickers down her legs. This procedure quickly transformed into kissing his way back up her legs, flicking at one with his tongue while his hand swept up ever so slowly towards her upper thigh.

She watched him as long as she could, transfixed by the painfully erotic sight of this man moving in between her thighs, but when his bang swept over a particularly sensitive spot on her inner thigh, her head dropped back involuntarily.

He chuckled into her skin and she vaguely thought she might have cried out. Then he was speaking in her mind, not interrupting his kisses and nibbles which were making her squirm. _You smell so incredible Rose. I can sense it from across the room when you're wet for me, you know. And when I'm right here and you're moaning my name …_

She hadn't realized until he said something that she was. But before she could get embarrassed at all, his hand had finished its trek up her leg and was slipping over her folds, seeking out places that made her actually cry out to the point where she hoped this room was sound proof.

She could feel him grinning foolishly against her leg, but couldn't bring herself to care as he skated those fingertips right by where she wanted him, so close …

Then his mouth was accompanying fingers, lips tracing almost chastely over her and she could actually feel herself getting wetter at the sensation. "Doctor!" She cried out, near ready to beg for him already. She needed more!

For an aching moment he lightened his caresses even more. And then his fingers thrust inside of her, just at the perfect angle and his lips found her clit, sucking hard. She broke apart instantly, sobbing his name.

But the onslaught didn't stop just because she'd orgasmed already. He lightened his touch and his mental voice was a frown. _That was too easy. Again._

Her world was still a hazy blur of pleasure and she was too sensitive to even contemplate reaching the pinnacle again. But his fingers were steadily stroking and his tongue was sweeping in broad strokes around her clit, both making her begin to feel a familiar pulsing of building pleasure again.

He swept his mouth down, moving his thrusting fingers aside and sweeping his tongue around her entrance, pressing inside of her. She was incoherent again, or would have been if she had ever been coherent after the first time. His fingers began to draw complex little circles around her clit which made her shout and everything was building and spinning and the world had narrowed to him and her.

This time, he reached up with his hand that was unoccupied and pinched and rolled her nipple sharply. She came apart with an actual scream.

He was above her when she came back to reality, unsure whether she'd blacked out or just been overloaded with sensation. He was gently petting her side and his grin, wet with her pleasure, was pure sin.

"You're so hypersensitive love. Can't wait to get you back to past me so he can take full advantage." If she'd thought his expression was wicked before, this smile made her shiver with its pure eroticism.

She vaguely thought about rolling him over to return the favor, but her muscles were still quavering a little from the force of all that pleasure. "You're uh …" Her voice faded into hoarseness and she tried again. "You're awfully good at this."

He stroked a hand up her side, and ended with fingers lightly brushing her nipple in a way that made her moan. "Practice makes perfect, isn't that what they say? And you, Tyler, give a man an awful lot of incentive to practice."

His voice cracked just a little, revealing that he wasn't quite as self-assured and in control as he seemed. She darted her eyes down the length of his body to where he was still wearing his trousers.

"Those look uncomfortable," she said, in a voice that matched his in sinful teasing. "Can I help you with that?"

She slid both hands along his sides, paying close attention to the bond and swirling her fingers whenever she reached a spot that made his arousal spike. By the time she reached his waistband, he was cursing quietly. "You are," he fought to get out around gasps at the feel of her fingers sliding along his hip bones and dipping teasingly under the hem of his trousers, "a frighteningly quick study."

She was working on his button fly now, taking an exceptional amount of pleasure in the way he swore and jerked every time she slipped around the button and stroked him instead.

"Rose," he moaned, "Be careful, I'm so fucking close." The sound of such dirty words on the Doctor's lips had the opposite effect of what he'd intended. She wanted more.

He wasn't wearing pants beneath his trousers, which made her beam. She leaned her head down and licked and long line from base to tip of his erection in approval of having fewer layers between them.

He made a keening sound of pleasure and his cock jerked at her touch, which made her want much more. She reached down to cup him with one hand, encircling his base while her mouth touched his tip in a laughably chaste kiss. She grinned up at him where he was swearing and looking down at her.

He'd managed to get some pillows beneath his head so he was propped up to watch her and one of his hands was edging towards her and back as though he desperately wanted to tangle it in her hair, but didn't quite dare.

She couldn't be bothered to break away from him long enough to tell him she wouldn't mind, and focused in on the task at hand. She swirled her tongue in a lazy circle around his head, making him squeak when she hit one spot on the underside. She flicked at that spot experimentally and he gasped.

Well, this was fantastic. She had a moment of regret for not getting to do this with her first Doctor, then reminded herself that this was her first Doctor in all the ways that mattered and sucked him all the way into her mouth.

He wasn't quite as excessively large as her first Doctor, but there was still no chance of her fitting him in all the way. So she stroked with her hand and sucked with her lips, brushing her tongue firmly over that one spot as she let him thrust in and out of her mouth. The rhythm seemed to break something in him because he whimpered and then there was a hand twisted through her hair almost tightly enough to be painful.

"Rose, I –" he gasped at her, and she darted her eyes to look up at him. Which made her wonder why she hadn't been looking all along since those dark eyes and that sweaty hair and that grimace of pleasure were painfully attractive.

She released him with a smirk, continuing to stroke with one firm hand. "Yes, Doctor."

"Come here!" His commanding tone made her realize just how much this latest act had turned her on. She could almost forget how recently she'd come with how badly she wanted it now.

She slid up his body slowly, reluctantly letting go of her grip on his cock only when she had to and replacing it quickly with a warmer, wetter part of her body that made him gasp. It made her gasp too though, and for a moment they were just clinging to one another, absorbed in the pleasure of being plastered along one another's naked bodies.

They couldn't hold out long though before they were kissing again, and the dirty things he was doing to her lips made her buck up against him, which made him moan and slide a hand down to press at her clit.

And while he was so close, he moved his erection to the right angle and Rose lifted up at the same time, unsure in the haze of passion she was in whether she'd simply known or if she'd read his thoughts.

And then she was coming down on top of him and he was thrusting up into her and swearing into her mouth and pushing their minds together with a desperate passion and need.

They stayed locked together for a long moment, caught up in the intensity of their intimacy. Eyes locked and she was fairly sure she could see the universe spinning in his eyes. Or maybe that was just the overload of pleasure centers.

His hands moved down to her hips and he made a pleading noise. "Rose, please …"

She sat up to get a better angle, making them both moan, then obligingly lifted and thrust back down, head lolling back with just how impossibly good it was. She looked down at him, loving how he seemed utterly transfixed with staring at her.

Her hand drifted to her breast to tease at her nipple as she began a steady rhythm of up and down thrusts that she'd intended to be slow, but was building too quickly to resist. One of his hands on her hip slid down to her wet curls to stroke around her clit, which made her yelp and come down on him especially hard.

His eyes were wild and she remembered vividly how close she'd gotten him before they started any of this. "Rose," he pleaded. "Oh, Rose."

He seemed incapable of vocalizing anything else, but his other hand did drift up to meet hers at her breast, taking over for her on her nipple. She whimpered at the feeling of his strokes and pulls, echoing what he was doing to her clit.

Her thrusts sped without any control from her, becoming wild and jerking as she sought her own pleasure. He was in her head chanting, _Come for me Rose. Come on, beautiful._

And she was teetering just barely on the edge when he pulled the trick she'd used on him and suddenly slammed her with an overload of his arousal. She crashed into bliss, almost unconsciously repeating the favor by pressing her orgasm into his brain, dragging him with her mentally and with the vice of her internal muscles around him.

She was fairly sure they both lost consciousness for a little while. When she next found herself coherent she was stroking his chest, head pillowed against him.

Words seemed not only too much effort, but also unnecessary. She could stay forever in this haze of adoration and pleasure. It seemed like quite a long time later before the Doctor let out a long sigh. "Rose Tyler. There are simply no words for how incredible you are, do you realize that?"

She made a noncommittal noise, unsure whether she actually wanted to return the world of words and movement and reality.

But suddenly her pillow was springing out of bed and to his feet. "I have got to get you back to me! Poor past me, I really am missing you so horrendously. No more mucking about!"

She watched him with a frown which was very quickly becoming a glare. She would prefer to just lay here for a few more hours, thanks. "It's a time machine you know. No one would know if we just …" She made a waving gesture.

He actually had the gall to laugh at her. "Rose Tyler, you have so much to do with past me! You can't be laying about with the future! Besides, the longer you're here the more paradoxes we're risking. Come along!"

Rose gave a deep and put-upon sigh. Maybe once they got to the console room it would take long enough for him to put in the coordinates that she would be able to seduce him into another round of that. Because first Doctor's claims and this Doctor's attraction to the contrary, she still was having difficulty trusting that her time line's Doctor saw their relationship as anything other than platonic.

After all, she'd been fairly obvious all along how she felt. And while she knew he cared about her tremendously, that was a very different thing than wanting to shag her silly.

This Doctor suddenly spun around as she was in the midst of these thoughts and pulling on her clothes again. He looked rather foolish, what with being naked still, but she didn't have long to dwell on that because he was pacing towards her. "You think I?! But I have always … Oh, Rose, I suppose you'll just have to see."

He spun away and bent to pick up his clothes. She watched him go with furrowed brows. Apparently he could pick up on more of her thoughts than she could his. Although what exactly he'd been on about, she wasn't sure.

In the console room again, she rather was losing any hope of seducing him back to bed again, since he was bounding about like a hyperactive puppy. Well, that was familiar at least. She grinned at the reminder of the Doctor she'd left.

She found a conveniently located chair and dropped into it, weighing her options. She did, after all, very much want to get back to her Doctor. And she was going to get back to this Doctor in time. _And_ there was another Rose out there who was coming back to the TARDIS any moment. A pregnant Rose.

What a strange thought, she mused, she had a son. And another one on the way. She couldn't help the foolish grin at the idea of the Doctor doing domestic to this extent. A family with the Doctor. She marveled.

"Right!" he called out from the opposite side of the console. "That should just about do it! Ready to get back to me Rose?"

"Yes, I am!" she called back to him with a huge grin.

He slammed down a big lever. And clung to the side of the console, preparing for take off.

And nothing happened.

"Huh," the Doctor said, releasing his hold on the console, face dropping. "What's all this then?" he asked, directing an accusatory glare at the Time Rotor.

_She's not done here yet,_ the TARDIS said imperiously in both their heads.

The Doctor frowned, "What do you mean, not done here? She needs to get back to me!"

The TARDIS was silent for a long moment and then sent a glowing image into both their minds of Rose blazing with the Time Vortex. This Rose recognized the image even though she'd never seen it before.

The Doctor furrowed his eyebrows and slammed that same lever up and down a couple more times, uselessly before responding to his ship. "What does that mean? What needs to be done still?"

There was another long silence, then the TARDIS was speaking just to Rose. _We need to be together my cub. To forge the bond that has always been there. And we need to do so before you leave._

She then was subject to a very vivid image of herself connected to the console with golden light while a pregnant version of herself and this Doctor stood and watched. Rose blinked up to see the Doctor scowling at her. "Was she talking just to you again? That's awfully rude."

"She says I need to bond with her here before I can leave. And I think maybe future me has to be here for it." The TARDIS let out a hum of agreement.

The Doctor spun in a confused circle. "But why? She's already bonded with you when she absorbed the Time Vortex."

_But you took that out of her before. I need to leave more of myself in her, to complete the process that you cut off._ The accusation was plain.

"I cut it off because it was killing her! She was hurting and her mind was never made to contain all of the vortex!" the Doctor said, batting away his ships blame.

_Yes, but that was before. She can take it now – with your bond supporting her. And she must._ The Doctor turned his gaze back to Rose and he pulled out his sonic screwdriver. Rose frowned because the light on it was green. And there were these awful claws on the end of it now.

She opened her mouth to say something critical about the changes, but thought better of it given the situation. Instead she asked, "What are you doing?"

He waved a hand and examined the readouts from his scan of her. "Checking something … aha! She was right. How did I not notice?"

The TARDIS sounded smug. _Easily distracted, your species._

He let the insult slide. "Rose, your DNA is still double stranded. Remember what I was telling you about compatibility? Your DNA has mutated in future you. I always thought it was the bonding that set it off, but apparently not. If fact, you're probably still aging now."

Suddenly his eyebrows raised in a moment of alarm. "So, er …" he trailed off for such a long moment that she thought he might not finish the sentence at all. But then the words were spilling out of his mouth quickly. "If you didn't want this future, wanted to stay human and normal and not all this with the time tots and eternity, you can still have that. If you want."


	10. Chapter 9

**A/N: **Oh look, another chapter right away! It's an apology for how long it took me last time. :-D Hope you enjoy it!

**As It Must Be**

**Chapter 9**

It took Rose a long moment to register his words. "If I don't want … But that would cause paradoxes, wouldn't it?" she asked, bemused.

The Doctor looked more than slightly terrified, although he was covering all his reactions up over the bond. "Well, maybe. But it's possible that you could do it anyway. Time is fluid you know. Some things can change."

She was still not completely understanding. "So you're saying you want me to not do it? To what, go back to former you, but age and die and never have your children?"

He couldn't hide the spasm of pure panic which shot along the bond. "Oh, Rose, that's my worst nightmare," he finally gasped out. "But you ought to have a choice in the matter."

Rose eased, the terrifying thought that the Doctor didn't want this proven wrong. "Doctor, how many times do I need to say it? I'm never going to leave you. I promised you forever, remember? I can't believe you think I'd turn it down when I finally have the chance to really follow through on that promise."

She turned toward the console. "So, what do we need to do then?"

She was swamped with a flood of pride and love from the TARDIS, and she realized it was being mirrored by the Doctor, who was walking toward her slowly, as though in awe.

"Rose Tyler. How can you still surprise me?" Rose blushed at the almost worshipful tone in his voice.

"Dunno. You're just foolish and don't listen to me, I suppose." He laughed, tone full of joy and wonder.

"I suppose indeed. Rose, I just …" Then he apparently decided that words were not good enough and bent his neck to kiss her.

There was something utterly magical about this man's mouth and the things it could do to hers. This thought registered through a haze of pleasure and warm emotions coming down the bond. It took her a moment to recognize what those emotions were – love.

The realization made her break the kiss and beam up at him. "I mean, I figured since we have kids together and have been together so long but … I really never thought we'd get here."

The Doctor looked confused for a moment at what she was referring to, then seemed to realize what exactly he was sending down the bond. "Rose Tyler I - ah, well, I'll leave it to your version of me to say for the first time, shall I? But, oh Rose, since day one."

Well, wasn't that perfect? Because for her it had been since he told her of the spin of the earth and was unlike anyone she'd ever met. He seemed to pick up on these thoughts, since he laughed a little with pure happiness. "Yes, from both my day one's."

This incredible statement deserved some serious positive reinforcement, so she swept up on her tip-toes and pulled his face down to hers to continue that fantastic kiss they'd been sharing before. Tongues tangled deeply, but also tenderly, with emotion that made her feel like melting.

She was just debating whether it would be bad to go back to their room and whether they would ever have the self control to complete what was probably a rather complex bonding with the TARDIS when a door slammed, a babble of voices were sharply cut off, and an unfamiliar woman's voice called, "Doctor!" with a horrified gasp.

Rose and the Doctor tore apart quickly, both thinking the same thought of their terribly bad luck with interruptions in the console room. The Doctor was thinking, in fact, on a much longer pattern of interruptions in the console room wherein they had managed to scandalize every companion they'd ever had, as well as their children, and how promising not to snog in the console room never proved to be effective for very long.

Rose was rather too caught up in observing the people who'd just walked into the TARDIS to think about much else.

A woman who looked to be near her age with brown hair and a cute dress was looking extremely confused. A child who looked maybe ten was beaming up at her. And there she was, looking hugely pregnant.

"So it is today! I thought it might be." Older Rose pushed aside the child and other woman to stride up to the Doctor. Well, it was more of a waddle what with how huge that belly was.

"Are we having twins? Or triplets?" Rose managed to get out. Ah, always with the extraneous information in awkward situations.

The other Rose laughed. "I wish! Nope, Time Lord pregnancies are always like this. You get huge. But I'm almost due, so this is as bad as it gets. Hopefully." She sent a glare toward the Doctor, who was having trouble keeping his eyes on just one of them and had an idiotic grin on his face.

"Oi, you better not be comparing attractiveness!" Rose said, recognizing the look in his eyes already.

He put both hands up and pulled as innocent a face as he could. "Of course not! Just wondering how my beautiful wife kept something like this from me for so long."

He gave her a rather pointed look and the older Rose grinned over at him. "Aren't you the one who's always going on about maintaining timelines? You didn't know when I came here, so I couldn't tell you! Told Clara and the kids though. How does it feel to be out of the loop?"

She'd sidled closer to him while she spoke and Rose recognized that smile she was giving him, tongue tucked in the corner of her lips. And admired the Doctor's reaction to it, darkened eyes which were fastened on her lips. "Er, what was that?"

The other Rose grinned and kissed the Doctor. It wasn't long or deep, but they managed to convey a depth of emotion in that press of lips which nearly knocked Rose over. She bemusedly thought to herself that she finally understood why everyone assumed they were a couple.

But then the other Rose was breaking away and skipping away from the Doctor towards Rose. "Hello me! Goodness, this is odd. How do you get used to this?" She directed that at the Doctor, who was watching the two of them, bemused. "And oi, mind out of the gutter if you please. She needs to get back to her version of you. Besides, we can't touch, remember?"

The Doctor's voice was squeakier than usual. "My mind wasn't in any gutters! Of course you two can't touch! And yes, getting you back where you belong right away."

The younger Rose could feel a flame of arousal over the bond which said his thoughts weren't quite as innocent as they seemed. The older Rose had folded her arms across her belly and was giving him a skeptical look. "I can read your mind, dear."

The Doctor frowned and looked at his feet. "Hm. Must have gotten used to the lower level bond from this Rose."

When he looked up again, Rose watched her older self give him a look that made him stumble back towards the console with darkened eyes and a flare of arousal she could feel. "That's just not fair!" He cried out.

Rose looked at her older self with admiration. "How'd you do that then?"

She laughed, "Oh, don't worry little me. You'll figure it all out quickly enough. And I feel too bad for him to give you any more of a head start." She winked at the Doctor.

"Um, excuse me, Rose, I know you were explaining before but my mind isn't quite wrapping around this craziness." All three heads turned to look at the girl in the entrance. She gave younger Rose a hesitant smile. "Hi, I'm Clara. I've been, er, travelling with them for a little while."

This introduction brought Rose's attention also to the girl standing beside Clara. Now that their eyes met, the girl let out a very large smile. "Hi Mum, I'm –" The Doctor made a very loud noise of protest which made everyone turn to him.

"Ah, I don't think she should know any more than she has to." He looked a wee bit embarrassed, especially when he caught the older Rose's laughing eyes.

The older Rose rolled her eyes and spoke to her younger self. "He's obsessed with being the one to name the Time Tots. You should hear the battles we have over this one." She patted her stomach with an adoring smile. "I'd let you feel her, but you can't touch yourself, you know."

Then she turned to the child still in the doorway. "Okay with you if we don't tell her your name, Sweetie? Make it a surprise, you know."

"Okay, Mum," the girl agreed readily, stepping up to take her mother's hand. "It's good to meet you though, when you were younger." She smiled adorably at the younger Rose, who met blue eyes the exact color of her first Doctor's.

There was a clattering from the hallway and the first child she'd met was calling out, "Dad, you better not be snogging in here again, but I have a question about using the –" He rounded the corner into the room and skidded to a stop. "Oh, hullo Mum! How was the spa then?"

The look of disgust on his face was practically hidden, which made the younger Rose smile. Somehow, miraculously, it looked like she was raising her children to have manners. Incredible with the father they had.

"It was lovely, Jack. And how goes your sonic, um …" The older Rose darted a look at the Doctor that was obviously a plea for assistance. Apparently her teasing from earlier had been enough to convince him not to help.

"Regressor, Mum, honestly. It's like you just wandered onto this ship." Rose revised her opinions of her children's politeness. Less surprising than she'd thought.

The older Rose seemed to have a similar thought given the pointed look she was directed at the boy. "You're not too old to be grounded, Jack. Be nice." He gave a huff, but it was barely audible so everyone collectively chose to ignore it.

"It's going okay. Dad had a really excellent idea, but I'm not sure how it's going to …" He trailed off as he saw at the younger Rose still standing by the console. "Well, I guess it can wait til we get her back home." He said, generously.

"Right," the younger Rose said, seeing her cue to interrupt all the by-play. "What exactly do I need to do before I can go back to my own time? The TARDIS said something about a bond? What does that mean exactly?"

Her older self frowned a little. "I can't remember doing all this the first time that well actually. Which is good I guess, or else I'd be trying to say exactly what I remember saying before, which would cause a real headache. But I know I need to help mediate it. And I know the TARDIS can guide it all."

The Doctor didn't seem to be able to help himself. "Are you sure this is what you want, Rose?"

The only response he got were two alarmingly identical glares from the older and younger Rose. He threw his hands up in retreat. "Right, sorry for asking!"

"Jack, Clara, M-" The Doctor interrupted Rose with a very loud and urgent cleared throat. Rose rolled her eyes at him and said, exaggeratedly, "My unnamed daughter. You all shouldn't be here for this. Could get caught in the backlash."

The girl looked concerned. "Are you sure you're going to be okay during it, Mum? I mean, we all know the worst than can happen to Dad is regeneration, but we still aren't sure about all the details of how this works for you."

The older Rose smiled and kneeled down to her daughter's level. "It's going to be fine. I've already lived this remember? And besides, the TARDIS wouldn't do anything to hurt me, you know that."

Younger Rose felt her heart melt a little at the obvious adoration between mother and child. And then marveled at the knowledge that this was her, her future. Incredible.

With the console room cleared of everyone except the Doctor and the Roses, the older Rose sat down on a very squishy looking sofa that the younger Rose hadn't noticed until that moment. She looked tired and the concern in the Doctor's eyes as he rushed toward her showed he'd obviously noticed.

"Are you alright, Love? I knew this was too strenuous so close to the due date. Junior here is really making it rough on you this go round." He looked upset and was fidgeting with his hands and sonic screwdriver in ways that Rose knew weren't actually doing anything more than making him feel like he was doing something.

"I'm fine, Doctor. Just a little sleepy. And this baby is no different than the other two." She grinned over at the younger Rose, "Time Tots take it out of you in ways human babies don't! The Doctor says it's the telepathy and time sense developing. Suck mental energy as well as physical. And they take an entire year!"

Younger Rose's eyes had widened and the Doctor flailed his hands. "You can't tell her things like that! Paradoxes!"

The older Rose waved him off. "It'll be fine. And she needs as much time to process all that as she can get! Not your idea of time to process, which happens to be after I'm already pregnant!"

She turned her attention back to Rose and continued her speech on gallifreyan-human pregnancy. "We get the most intense cravings. And for things we don't even know exist! Became almost a game, didn't it Doctor? Me describing things and you having to figure out what exactly it was the baby wanted." The Doctor had collapsed to the sofa beside her and maneuvered her into his arms. She nudged him with her elbow to help with the story telling.

"Personally, I'm partial to how desperate for sex you got around month three …" He said, with a dark glint in his eyes as he looked at the older Rose. She elbowed him with real force this time and flushed red.

"Alright, maybe we should just let you see for yourself then." Rose finished story time hurriedly.

"Rose, what happened to, it's still me? Feeling uncomfortable with the mention of our sex life?" he teased.

Both Roses were blushing and avoiding one another's eyes. Younger Rose was the one to explain. "I know it's me, but it's still weird. Can we get to this bonding thing now?"

"Right! Of course. Well, except that I'm not entirely sure how to go about that. What do we need to do old girl?"

The TARDIS had been humming happily since the older Rose had walked in the door, overjoyed to have her adored ones all here and to be about to bond to her Rose. _Just open up my heart again, my Thief. And then don't interfere except to support her over the bond. And my Wolf, you will help support me so that I don't overwhelm her this time._

"Okay! That's easy! Anything we expressly shouldn't do? Like, say, if I were to look into the heart of the TARDIS …" The Doctor had a curious and enthusiastic tone that seemed to make it through regenerations.

_Do not look, my Thief. But hold her hand._ The pregnant Rose stood up, bringing her husband with her and guiding him to stand by her younger self. She gave her younger self a bright smile of support, then continued to stand at the console and put a hand on the time rotor. She closed her eyes and the happy hum of the TARDIS increased.

The Doctor jumped into action, literally. He pulled his sonic out and began using it for its named purpose for once, removing screws from the console. This console needed more than the removal of a panel to access the heart and he continued to delve under the time rotor.

The older Rose put a hand over to him and spoke with a voice a little more resonant than usual. When the younger Rose looked away from the Doctor to her, she noticed that her eyes were glowing golden. "I can take it from here Thief. Now go to her and look away."

The Doctor, for once, did what he was told without talking back. His hand slid into Rose's and he looked at her for a long moment before he had to turn away. "You can do this. You know it. You are the very best Rose."

He placed a hand on her cheek and bent to press his lips to hers, lightly and tenderly and with all the love in the world. Rose actually found her vision going hazy with tears from the sheer beauty of it.

He pulled back slowly and turned away, clutching to her hand with a familiar force.

Rose turned to the console and her future self, who was smiling at them with adoration. "Are you ready Rose Tyler? It will be overwhelming again. Cling to him."

Rose had barely time to nod and brace herself before the time rotor was opening and familiar golden swirls were spilling out. She was transfixed by them, couldn't have looked away if she wanted to. They curled into her eyes, into her mind, lighting up parts of her brain which she hadn't known she possessed.

She had more senses, infinitely more ways to experience the universe. She could see past and present and future with no divisions between them, time as a curve, a ball, nonexistent with everything happening all together. Some small part of her, a lesser sense, was aware that she screamed and clutched the hand she held.

The perceptions backed off suddenly, although they were still overwhelming. Time coalesced into a complex mesh of swirling strands, some stronger and brighter than others. Each strand branched millions and millions of ways and there were billions of the strands, impossible to conceive of. She almost had to scream for release again.

But there was a part of her mind which offered solace, someone who maybe could conceive of the infinity of all of time and space. She grabbed onto her bond with the Doctor like a lifeline, which it had suddenly become.

It was like a breath of fresh air after drowning. Her senses were still utterly overwhelmed, but here she could rest and ignore the excesses in the rest of her mind. Dimly she heard a voice speaking to her. It took her a long moment to identify it as the TARDIS. _My Wolf, you must take hold of your timeline and bind it to me. Let us shape time to our will._

She shuddered away from the thought. _Time and space are not ours to manipulate!_ She called back to the TARDIS, flashes of screaming, bat-like beasts and a father driven to suicide in her mind.

There was a glow of warm approval through her mind. _No, they are not my Wolf. But just this once, here, this is as it must be._

And then the TARDIS was guiding Rose away from the Doctor and towards the timelines, but they were less alarming with the TARDIS as guide, pruning away the irrelevant to show her only the time line she desired.

_Look how brightly you burn my Wolf. It is meant to be. Do you see now?_ Rose was transfixed by the timeline before her, winding its way ever so long and tied so tightly to one burning just as bright. And offshoots of these timelines, glorious long lives of their children of time.

She was aware, in that same dim corner of her mind that registered screaming, that she was crying. This timeline, her life was so impossibly beautiful. It was almost involuntarily to reach out and grasp it.

_That's it. Pull yourself in, let me into you._ She was changing, she could tell. The brightness of the timelines didn't fade, but it hurt less to look at now, infinity seemed more manageable, like something that she could hold in her mind and not go insane from.

_Thank you my Wolf. You've done it._

And with that, she was suddenly released and collapsed to the ground. She wasn't sure if she was losing consciousness or if that was just the sensation of losing all those extra senses.

She realized she was being held, cradled in the Doctor's arms. "Hello," she said with a smile.

"Oh, Rose I was so terrified." He sounded it, weak and hoarse. His hand was cupping her face and she noticed that it was red and swollen and had bloody half circles which looked like nail marks.

"Did I do that? Oh god, I'm sorry!" She exclaimed.

He actually laughed with relief. Her voice from above them brought her attention up. "I told you I would be fine! I was always fine."

The future her looked a little worn and unstable, but was smiling fiercely. She could tell along the bond that the Doctor was torn between getting up and staying here, but her future self waved him away. "I'm fine. Just, holding back the rest of the heart was a little tiring, especially when combined with the baby."

Younger Rose was still concerned by how shaky she looked, so she stood up herself to free the Doctor to go to the other Rose. "I'm fine too. Feel kind of energized actually." It wasn't a lie. It felt like that gold stuff was still flowing through her veins.

The other Rose smiled, "Yeah, that'll be the time vortex. It's going through you now mutating your DNA. Which you'd think would take a lot out of you, but actually it's like you're upgrading everything."

She moved to go sit on the sofa again. "Actually, you'll probably be wanting to go back already, huh? The TARDIS'll let you now that you're done."

Rose's face broke into a huge grin. "Is it that obvious? I love you," she said to the Doctor hovering over the future Rose, "But I really can't wait to be back in my own time."

The Rose on the sofa waved the Doctor's hands away from her. "Doctor, I'm fine. Will you please go set the coordinates already?"

"The TARDIS can set the coordinates, I just need to bang down a lever. Which I'm sure she could do as well, just keeps me around to make me feel like I'm doing something." He straightened his bowtie, obviously affronted by how small a part he'd played in any of this.

"Of course not Dear, you're the designated driver, you know that." Older Rose had a teasing grin that was just daring him to kiss it off her. And he did.

"Guys," Rose ventured hesitantly, when their kiss was growing increasingly passionate on the sofa, "Maybe we could get me back before you do that?"

Older Rose shoved the Doctor away and towards the console. "You're a menace." She said to him.

He smiled, "You love it." Then turned to the console. "Okay Old Girl, you actually ready this time? Here we go!"

He slammed down a large lever and the TARDIS shook with that familiar grinding which made all three of them grin with affection. When the shaking stopped, three heads had poked out of a side door.

"Time to say goodbye?" Jack asked, "Dad, you could give a guy some warning before you do that, I could have been at a very sensitive part in this project!"

He sauntered over to the younger Rose and grinned. "I'd hug you, but you know. I can't wait to get to know you for real."

Rose smiled, looking over at the still unnamed daughter who was smiling at her shyly. "And I can't wait to meet you two for real. Take care of your Dad for me, won't you?"

She turned to her older self. "First," the pregnant her began, "you should stop worrying about your Doctor and being attracted to you. You will very quickly discover that that is a very ridiculous idea. But he'll prove that."

"And second, well, I don't even need to say it, but … it's an absolutely fantastic life. Like we could never have dreamed. Treasure every minute, yeah?" Rose agreed with her older self. That did not need to be said.

"Oh! And third …" she leaned in, which made the Doctor flail a little, but they were careful not to touch as Rose whispered something very dirty in her ear. She giggled.

"What did you say to her?" The Doctor asked, suspiciously.

Older Rose waved him off. "None of your business. Just a little tip for her about you."

"That's not fair at all!" He complained, but seemed to recognize it as a lost cause because he made his way over to younger Rose instead of continuing to argue.

"I'll see you very very soon my love," he said, voice transformed from the complaint of earlier. "And thank you so very much for everything."

Rose almost teared up again at just how genuine his voice was. Instead of an answer, she sent him a blast of emotion over their bond. He grinned hugely at her and swung down to catch her lips in a kiss that near blistered her with passion and emotion.

It was over too soon. But there were many, many more kisses to look forward to. "Now get out there to me. I'm missing you very terribly."

Rose took one last look at the future and beamed at them all. It seemed almost inconceivable that life could be so good. But here she was. Time to go start it.

She walked out the door and towards the TARDIS opposite this one.


	11. Chapter 10

**A/N: **At long last! You'll all be happy to know that I am finally back in the land of real internet connection. Thank you so much for your patience and support. This is the chapter you've all been waiting for - only one more after this and an epilogue!

* * *

**As It Must Be**

**Chapter 10**

When she opened the door, she was greeted with a mental wave of warmth from the TARDIS that made her vision black out for a moment, she was so overwhelmed with the input from her newest senses. _My Wolf!_

She lost herself for a long moment in the TARDIS's joy, sharing her memories, understanding the TARDIS's pain at not being able to tell her Thief the truth all those years, how incredible it was to see her again, how happy she was to bond with her fully now, how happy they were all going to be …

The dialogue had faded into something like a gleeful mental hug, postponing more detailed communication of their times apart for later.

And then a broken, hoarse voice tore her completely from her reverie with the TARDIS. "Rose!" She felt her lips turning up in a huge grin almost involuntarily. It was just _SO_ good to hear that voice again.

Even with him across the console room, she could feel their bond lighting up in a way that fit more than it ever had before. She blinked open her eyes and found herself leaning back against the door.

That wouldn't do at all. She ran forward to where the Doctor had already made it around the console and before she could even register how impossibly _good_ it was to see him again, they were hugging. She closed her eyes, better to absorb the other sensations which were inundating her.

The purely physical senses would have been enough to overwhelm her by themselves normally. His body was so solid against hers, pressed as tight as they could get and her face was buried in his neck. She was on tip-toe so that their chests would press together and her hands wrapped around his back and squeezed. He was so wiry, but so strong at the same time. And his suit jacket felt so perfectly familiar against her hands that she wanted to cry.

Then there was his smell. That same familiar scent that had been on the two other Doctor's she'd just been with, dark and timey, but it was mixed with something that was just this particular Doctor which smelled sweet like cotton candy only a little spicy as well. And she was getting a direct infusion of all of it with her face so close to his hair and the join of his neck.

He was murmuring her name into her ear. "Oh Rose, Rose, Rose …" As though he needed to keep saying it to believe she was actually there. And that voice, in what was so close to her accent, expressive and dramatic and ever so _him_.

But all of these senses were rather utterly and completely erased by just how intensely she was caught up in her mind. Because he was glowing so sharply that she was almost afraid to approach him again and reconnect their bond. Except that she wanted to so badly that it was a necessity.

She slid up to his mind almost shyly, pressing forward just a little. He gasped at the sensation and pulled away from her physically, which made her open her eyes and frown at him.

The TARDIS whispered into the back of her mind, _He doesn't have his memories back yet. So he doesn't completely know. And he's never done this before that he can remember._

She lost herself for a long moment in pure visual pleasure at seeing him again, those flawless whiskey eyes and the hair she'd wanted to stroke and pull for an eternity. And then registered the emotions in his eyes: a lot of hope, a lot of adoration, and a little bit of panic.

"Rose, do you know what you're doing there? I mean, oh goodness, I don't know that I can resist …" He ran a frantic hand through his hair, but then ripped it away to return to touching her, if only her elbows.

She smiled at him. "Doctor, how many times do I have to say it? I'm never gonna leave you. And I mean that." Her words were full of a triumphant joy that rocked him back with the sheer force of it.

"Now just tell me you want this, Doctor." He looked almost torn, and she cursed his self-control, his need to be alone and not involve himself. She began to wonder if she should get him to find his memories again before they could …

But then he sucked in a pained breath and grinned at her hugely. "I've never wanted anything more in nine hundred years, Rose Tyler."

She didn't wait for any more hesitations, but pressed forward into his mind. And oh, if she'd thought that they fit together before, it was nothing compared to this. She was stunned with the utter certainty that this was were she was meant to be for the rest of forever. And this was just the beginning.

As they slid together mentally, it was thoughtless to slide together physically as well, clinging to one another as tightly as possible. The suit jacket she'd enjoyed against her fingers before was now keeping her too far away from him.

She slid her hands under his jacket with a noise of protest at meeting shirt and feeling a vest beneath it, almost sobbing at how much further she had to go before they would be skin on skin.

But then he was pulling her just barely far enough away and their mouths were crashing onto one another, so she didn't have the time to worry about all the layers for long.

It was so good that she almost sobbed with it. They were both frantic, pressing as close as they could get, lips crushed against teeth and tongues tangling like they had wanted to for oh so long. It took a long moment of frantic crushing of mouths before either could back off enough to gentle the kiss a little.

It was still frantic and heated, but they were both assured of one another for the moment, ready to ease off so that they could slide deeper into each others mouths, tongues stroking deep, mimicking the intimacy of their minds. They parted for just a moment to breathe and then were kissing again, lips playing against each other, her lower lip trapped in his teeth and his tongue sucked hard into her mouth.

She was making a desperate whimpering noise and clawing at the bottom of his shirt. His hands were locked on her back as though he was afraid to move them for fear she'd disappear. Finally, finally his shirt gave and she was tearing it off of him, no patience for things like buttons. It was only her near strangling him by yanking at his tie that finally made him release her to yank at it himself.

Removing his shirt and tie made him realize that he could be taking off her layers as well, which he set to as soon as their mouths met again with a groan from both of them.

His hands slipped under her shirt and he made a high pitched, whimpering noise that Rose would have laughed at if she was anywhere near her right mind. _So soft …_ his mind echoed in hers. She wondered, in a distant part of her mind, whether he even realized she could hear him.

But then she was distracted by peeling off his vest to get her hands on his bare chest. He was so perfect that she could hardly breathe for it and she mindlessly pressed herself against him, reaching for his mouth and noticing happily that her shirt had disappeared somewhere in the mean time.

At some point they'd stumbled back towards one of the arching struts of the TARDIS. Rose's back pressed up against the coral roughly, but she hardly noticed because she was far too caught up with kissing and biting at every bit of his neck she could reach. He was taking advantage of his mouth's freedom to mutter curses and dirty words and her name in a string of incoherent syllables she wasn't listening to.

Then his hands were busying themselves with the clasp of her bra, fumbling behind her and releasing his grasp every time she swirled her tongue around a particularly sensitive spot. He gasped with triumph when he finally got it unhooked and then was tearing it off of her, hands reaching up simultaneously to cup her breasts.

Her nipples had pebbled long ago and were pressing hard into his palms, making her keen out and drop her head away from his neck with distraction. He went incoherent at the sight, letting out wordless groans and gasps only and moving his fingers to brush over her nipples almost too lightly. Then he was twisting them sharply, gentleness dissolved in a haze of pure desire. She was sure she made some highly approving noise at this, but she couldn't have said what it was.

Her shorts and knickers were shoved down suddenly, the Doctor breaking at the noises she was making. In her head, she could hear him chanting her name along with a breathtaking rush of adoration and lust and love. She returned the favor by reaching for the clasp of his trousers, fingers stumbling to undo it and giving up when his mouth reached down for hers again. His hands replaced hers on the fly and then she was grasping his rock hard cock instead of just his trousers.

They both made loud noises at this connection and Rose could feel herself dripping over her thighs.

"Doctor, please, please, please." He didn't need the encouragement. He lifted her into the perfect position against the TARDIS, held her there with his body, and then thrust into her body and her mind as he dropped his head to bite just exactly _there_ where he had when he'd worn a leather jacket.

She was sure she screamed and she may have blacked out for a moment, the sensations were so blindingly extreme. It was more intense than anything she'd ever experienced. She was floating and falling and bursting into tingling, gold, sensation. And then she came to again and he was thrusting into her, filling her mind and her body and it was so perfect, so full and complete and she loved him so very much.

These thoughts reverberated through the bond and she felt his awe, along with just how intensely he felt the same. There was a deep moment when they stilled and were simply rocked with one another's emotion.

And then their bodies cried out for one another and she reached up to his mouth again to mate their lips and tongues. One of his hands reached from holding her pinned to play at where he was thrusting into her, marveling at their connection and teasing her clit until she was a writhing mass of need and pleasure again.

"Doctor, I'm so close, God, Doctor you feel so good, this is so so so good."

_Show me how it feels Rose. Show me and then scream for me again._ His mental tone was full of dark lust and she could do nothing but obey, gathering up as much of her pleasure as she could in her mindless state and shoving it towards him. He let out an inhuman growling sound and thrust hard into her, dancing right on the edge of too much.

And then he reciprocated and thrust his pleasure into her mind on his next thrust into her body. She was overwhelmed and screamed for him again, body clenching around him, pulling him into her with everything she had. And he gave in to her demand for everything, cock jerking as he exploded into her, their shared minds going white with pure sensation and pleasure.

Rose didn't register much for a long time. Somehow they made it gently to the floor and detached their bodies enough to let them curl up around one another. The TARDIS must have intervened because the grated floor was much softer than it ought to have been.

They might have slept, or they might have simply lain there basking in the pleasure of their shared minds, each others bodies, their mere presence together. She knew that at some point they both had gotten completely undressed, tugging scraps of clothing still clinging to them off and to the sides so that they could curl up against one another completely.

Slowly, lazily, their minds disentangled enough to think coherently and separately. The first real indication of this was the Doctor whispering into her hair, "Hello."

She grinned into his chest. "Hello."

He let out a tiny sound that was a little like a sob. "Do you have any idea how much I've missed you?"

She nodded, knowing he could feel the movement of her head where it was pillowed him. "I've missed you just as much."

They reveled in this for a long moment before the Doctor's curiosity got the better of him. "Rose, where you've been … the bond, I mean … I don't remember!"

Rose turned a little so she could look at his face and wondered why she hadn't been admiring that view all along. "You said you were going to hide the memories from yourself, but they should still be there if you look."

"Right," he nodded, "But when I do that it might take a little to integrate the memories and I want to sort some things out first."

He took a deep breath. "This, er, bond, you know what it is? I didn't, oh Rose … force it on you or anything?" He sounded terrified and Rose wondered if the real reason he was delaying access to the memories was that he was afraid what they might contain.

"No, Doctor! You already explained the bond and you certainly didn't force it. Well, I mean …" she blushed and became aware of the bite mark on her neck again. "You didn't force it more than I wanted."

He made an extremely noncommittal noise, so Rose went up on her elbows to look him in the eye. "Doctor, don't do this to us. I've always said that I wanted to spend forever with you. And I've always …" she flushed and then carried on bravely, "I've always wanted more romantically from you. Honestly, it's you I'm worried were forced! I got you at a weak moment and I didn't want to take advantage, but I might have accidentally? I know you didn't want this."

This time the Doctor was the one to roll to his side to meet her eyes. "Hang on, definitely not! Sure, I wouldn't have done this, but that's just because I didn't think it was even possible! And I wouldn't want to take advantage of a companion like that when you're so young and relying on me to take you home."

His eyes blazed fiercely. "But there is absolutely nothing I want more than this bond Rose Tyler. I never hoped to imagine that the universe could be so kind to me."

She took a deep breath and then grinned at him. "Well then, that's just … fantastic! We have all of time and space at our feet and I have it on good authority that I have considerably longer than expected to treasure it!"

He had slumped back to the ground in a kind of happy exhaustion, but shot back up a little at this. He looked hesitant, but was holding back a fierce happiness. "What does that mean, longer than expected?"

"Ah." Rose frowned. It was going to be difficult to keep this from him.

Suddenly she heard a musical, chiming laugh in her head and she felt the TARDIS seep into her recent thoughts. She set the thoughts of her visit with the future behind a thin veil which made them fuzzy to Rose and, she theorized, incomprehensible to the Doctor. _Perfect! Thank you old girl._ She received the mental equivalent of a tight hug in her head.

The Doctor was looking increasingly concerned at her lack of response, so she lied quickly. "The TARDIS has been showing me some interesting things about my DNA. It changed with the Bad Wolf you know, that's what made the telepathy with the TARDIS and the bond possible at all. And I guess the bond accelerated it."

The TARDIS interrupted her. _You should do some scans. You may have given yourselves a present._ The ship's voice was merry and knowing.

Rose looked up with alarm, remembering suddenly and with a wave of panic that they had been continuing to not use any kind of birth control despite her newly discovered fertility. She heard the ship chuckle into just her head, _Not that kind of present dear, just your new life expectancy and compatibility. Let him see for himself or he'll never believe it._

This was said with a warm fondness, like a mother for a difficult toddler, and Rose almost laughed at the image.

"Right!" the Doctor said, eyes bright at the possibility of a surprise. "Off to the medbay then, up you get!" He bounced to his feet, still naked and searching about for his clothes with confusion. How exactly had his tie ended up draped over that strut on the ceiling? And how was he going to get it down? Well, problems for later.

Rose moved more slowly, suddenly shy with the nudity. They hadn't talked at all, unsurprisingly, and though they had experienced a much more intimate kind of communication, she still wasn't sure what he really wanted from this whole situation.

They were rather unique after all. After years of sexual tension and thinking that it was never ever going to happen, she'd gotten together with his former self and then seen the future to know that they were going to work out in a very dramatic and domestic way. But the in between steps were still unknown and the two of them had never talked about anything like this.

And now they had sex against a wall and emotional intimacy beyond anything she'd ever imagined and, apparently, casual nudity as they put their clothes on. They needed to talk this all out.

Characteristically, the Doctor did not seem similarly inclined to a conversation about their changed relationship status. Instead, after both of them had pulled their clothes back on, he ushered her to the medbay, eager to investigate.

Rose was not quite as fascinated, especially since she already knew the results. But she was rather interested to see his reaction. He did want her forever, didn't he? She knew she was overjoyed about this news, knew that her first Doctor would have strained muscles from smiling too hard, but this Doctor had been all about restraint when it came to her, pushing her away from slipping too close to him.

That may have been because of her limited lifespan though. So he had to be excited about this, right?

She hopped up on the medbay bed, a familiar location, and wondered if he would mind if she took a nap while he did this. Bonding with the TARDIS had been more than a little exhausting. And besides that, she hadn't slept more than a couple hours in … a long time.

In fact, thinking on that, she wondered if it may have been a part of this whole adaptation thing. She'd been feeling that before bonding with the TARDIS, so maybe initiating the bond with the Doctor had started some of the changes in her. How many more changes were there going to be?

The thought was a little frightening, but never let it be said that Rose fled things which were new and exciting.

The Doctor was making odd humming noises and she couldn't decide if they were excited or concerned. She reached out to the bond tentatively, still not sure whether this was a breach of some kind of Time Lord etiquette since they hadn't talked about it and her first Doctor claimed it was basically a marriage bond. But she wanted to know what the test results said.

His emotions were too conflicted to get a good read on though, so she sighed and just asked. "Doctor, what're you finding?"

He spun a screen around to her, focusing on her suddenly and intensely. "D'you see this?" He gestured to a complex, spinning figure that looked something like a braid. She nodded hesitantly. "That's your DNA right now. And this, this is your DNA from a couple weeks ago when you sprained your ankle, remember?"

She looked at the screen again and saw a twisted double strand which looked much like pictures from her rudimentary science classes. "It's a lot different," she confirmed.

He looked a little frantic. "And this, this Rose, is my DNA. Well, TNA." He swung the screen to her again and she saw another braided strand.

"It looks like mine now." He nodded. "Well, what exactly does that mean for me? I mean, I feel, well, pretty much the same as always."

He shook his head, staring at the screen after having flipped back to her new genetic material. "I don't know, that's what's throwing me. I'd have to sequence the genome and that'll take me a bit."

"Doctor," she said, trying to make him focus on her again, "At a rough guess."

He ran a distracted hand through his hair, which would have made her laugh at just how chaotic it had gotten if she wasn't more focused on this news. "Well, you'd probably get a lot more of the qualities of a gallifreyan. Telepathy obviously. Time sense maybe. Longevity. And, er, we're compatible now. Genetically I mean."

She grinned at this. It reminded her that as concerned as the Doctor was and as worried as she was about the details, it was all going to turn out just fantastic in the end. So really, it would be best for both of them to just get their minds off of this nonsense for a bit.

"But you think I'm fine," she asked, determinedly.

"Welllll, yes, I suppose so. You've been dealing fine so far at least and if the TARDIS says its okay … well, it's a little bit stupendous, isn't it?" He had gotten that infectious grin back and finally Rose was relaxing back into normalcy with this version of her Doctor. Thank god!

"If I'm gonna be fine, then maybe this is a good time for you to get those memories back, huh, Doctor? And then maybe we could talk about this whole thing." She waved a hand between them and was rather impressed with herself for pressing the issue.

The Doctor still looked apprehensive, but with a deep sigh, he seemed to realize that he couldn't keep running away from what he'd done. "Right then. Here goes nothing then, I guess. Allons-y."

His gaze blanked out and Rose figured he turned inward to get those memories. She tapped her foot nervously. It was the same man! There was nothing to be nervous about. He'd certainly wanted it then. He'd wanted it earlier today in fact! Not an hour ago!

And if he decided that he didn't want it in this regeneration, well, she'd been dealing with that. She could probably go back.

A wordless part of her strongly protested that assertion. But the point was that the worst case scenario was something she could deal with.

And then he blinked his eyes and she realized she'd been holding her breath and she might not be quite as prepared to cope with this as she'd been telling herself. "Doctor?" She asked, tentatively.

"Oh, Rose," His words were breathy and heartfelt and he moved towards her suddenly to gather her into his arms.

"Rose I can't believe I lived without you for so long," he muttered into her ear, voice gasping a little. "I don't think I could have if it weren't for the TARDIS blocking some of the bond."

"So you, er, remember everything?" she asked hesitantly and then sucked in a very quick breath as she felt his tongue tracing down the side of her neck.

"Mm-hm," he breathed out, breath against wet skin making her whole body shiver involuntarily. Her nipples had peaked against her shirt again.

"I wanted to, uh, to tell you that I'm sorry." It was hard to get words out against the distraction of his lips, but there were important things that she needed to say, she was sure.

He pulled away from her to meet her eyes in confusion. "Sorry for what?"

"Well, I kind of took advantage of you a little. I mean, you didn't know who I was, but I knew exactly who you were and what our relationship was and you might have assumed something that wasn't true what with the mental bond I guess we had and I knew you were in a really bad place and …"

Her babble was cut off abruptly by a pair of rather flawless lips pressed firmly against her own. She marveled for a moment at how the Doctor's constant flow of words had rubbed off on her. And then thoughts were driven out of her mind by just how pliant and warm he was against her, and now sliding over her lips and pulling her bottom lip between his to part her lips gently.

Before she could push him into deepening the kiss, he pulled back. "Rose, don't be ridiculous. If anything, I took advantage of you. I hardly asked for permission." He grimaced, his guilty look familiar on his face.

She shook her head firmly. "No, I told you then and I tell you now, I've always known how much the Time War hurt you and I've wanted to protect you from it for just as long. And if I got to then, I'm overjoyed about it."

He pulled back a little more and looked concerned. "But, Rose …"

She continued, anticipating his complaints. "And besides, like I told you then. I've, er, always wanted to."

She flushed a deep red, but was glad she'd gotten it out. "Which is why I feel bad! Because I know that it's not something you ever wanted for us!" And now it was out there. Rose felt a surge of relief for finally saying it to this version of her Doctor.

There were several seconds of silence before Rose got up the nerve to meet his eyes again.

She was not expecting the look in his eyes. Something awkward and uncomfortable, that's what she had thought she would see. Him floundering for words which would make the situation less awkward and maintain their friendship in the face of her romance with his former self. Or else, if she was being hopeful, some sort of denial of what she'd said, gearing up to convince her not to blame herself.

Instead his eyes were blazing with heat, pupils dilated and expression fierce.

She let out an involuntary gasp, heat flaring through her immediately. She reached hesitantly along the bond and his arousal made the heat focused, flaming to her core. Her knees felt weak and trembled and she rocked towards him a little.

"Didn't want it for us?" He stepped towards her, "Oh Rose, you are _so_ wrong."


End file.
